243-244. 



P R 

A z Z >R^NARD'S ENGLISH 
4 CLASSIC SERIES 

EXPLANATORY NOTES 





aOAN OF ARC gfe£3f 
AND THE \m 
ENGLISH /Ifj 
MAIL COACH 

DE qUINCEY 




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THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 



MAYNAED'8 ENGLISH CLASSIC SERIES. - Nos. 000-000-000. 

JOAN OF ARC 

AND 

THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

CONTAINING ALSO 

LEV-ANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 

BY 

THOMAS DE QUINCEY 

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

JULIAN W. ABERNETHY, Ph.D. 

PRINCIPAL OF THE BERKELEY INSTITUTE, BROOKLYN, N.Y. 
AUTHOR OF "ABERNETHY'S AMERICAN LITERATURE" 




NEW YORK 
MAYNARD, MERRILL, & CO. 



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LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Oi 

APh 26 1906 
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CI/ASS GL. xkc. No 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1906, 
By MAYKABD, MEKKILL, & CO. 



INTRODUCTION 

Thomas De Quincey, the "English Opium-Eater," 
was born in Manchester, August 15, 1785. The main 
facts of his life were recorded by himself in the most re- 
markable autobiography in the language. Every detail 
was colored and expanded into a poetic picture by his 
eccentric imagination, but the story has been found to 
be essentially correct. His father, a prosperous merchant 
engaged in foreign commerce, died in his thirty-ninth 
year, leaving a family of six children. The mother, a 
woman of unusual ability and culture, was enabled by 
means of an ample income to give to her children the best 
social and educational advantages. From 1792 to 1796 
the home of the De Quinceys was at Greenhay, a large 
country house on the outskirts of Manchester. Here 
they were furnished, he says, "with all the nobler benefits 
of wealth, with extra means of health, of intellectual cul- 
ture, and of elegant enjoyment; and if (after the model 
of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks 
to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early 
situation, these four I would single out as worthy of 
special commemoration — that I lived in a rustic solitude ; 
that this solitude was in England ; that my infant feelings 
were molded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by horrid, 
pugilistic brothers; finally, that I and they were dutiful 
and loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent 
church." 

With the exception of the enforced adventures with one 
3 



4 INTRODUCTION 

"pugilistic " brother, "whose genius for mischief amounted 
to inspiration," the shy, sensitive, diminutive Thomas was 
occupied constantly during his early years with books 
and daydreams. "From my birth," he says, "I was 
made an intellectual creature, and intellectual in the high- 
est sense my pursuits and pleasures have been even from 
my schoolboy days." He first received instruction from 
a clergyman in Manchester; he spent two years at the 
Bath Grammar School, and a year at a private school in 
Wiltshire. Everywhere he was regarded as a prodigy in 
classical learning. Before he was fifteen he could write 
and speak Greek with ease, and compose lyric poems in 
both Latin and Greek. One of his masters said to a visitor : 
"That boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than 
you or I could address an English one." In his fifteenth 
year he was entered at the Manchester Grammar School 
for a term of three years, where it was expected he would 
obtain a university scholarship ; but at the end of a year 
and a half, the monotonous and uninspiring life of the 
school having become intolerable to him, he ran away, 
slipping out of the head master's house early one July 
morning, with an English poet in one pocket and Euripides 
in the other. His mother looked upon the act "much as 
she would have done upon the opening of the seventh seal 
in the Revelations"; but a lenient uncle arranged that he 
should have his liberty, with an allowance of a guinea a 
week. After a few months of vagrancy in North Wales, 
during which he "suffered grievously from want of books," 
with that strange perversion of common sense which char- 
acterized his actions through life, he abandoned friends 
and support and hid himself in the wilderness of London. 
His mysterious adventures and sufferings at this time 
constitute that "impassioned parenthesis" of his life, the 
description of which reads like one of his marvelous opium 



INTRODUCTION 5 

dreams. After about a year of this penniless London life 
he was discovered by his friends and sent to Oxford, in 
the autumn of 1803. 

Of Do Quincey's university career little is known farther 
than that he won the reputation of being "a quiet and 
studious man, remarkable for his rare conversational 
powers, and for his extraordinary stock of information 
on every subject"; that he lead prodigiously, especially 
in German literature and philosophy; and that he left 
without taking a degree. He may have neglected much 
of the venerable lore of Oxford — "ancient mother, heavy 
witli ancestral honors, time-honored, and, haply it may 
be, time-shattered," as he calls her; but it was here that 
he laid the foundation of his literary fame, mainly by 
mastering the great English classics. The nobility of his 
stately prose and the fullness of his poetic thought bear 
ample evidence of the early influence of Milton, Shak- 
spere, Sir Thomas Browne, and Jeremy Taylor. 

De Quincey had been strongly attracted toward Words- 
worth through his poetry, and in 1809 he took possession 
of the little cottage at Grasmere that had recently been 
the poet's home. Here he lived about twenty years, in 
intimate relations with the famous "Lakists," Words- 
worth, Southey, Coleridge, Lloyd, and Wilson. Here 
occurred the long struggle with the opium habit, from the 
horrors of which arose the splended visions embodied in 
the poetic prose of his Confessions. He had experimented 
with the pernicious drug at Oxford while suffering from 
neuralgia, and from the moment that he first experienced 
its wonderful effects he was the slave of opium,- and was 
never afterwards without a supply of the " ruby-colored 
laudanum." During the years 1804-1818 the habit grew 
upon him until his daily allowance of laudanum was 
8000 drops, increased often to 12,000, enough to fill nine 



6 INTRODUCTION 

ordinary wineglasses. The result was a complete paraly- 
sis of the will ; reading and dreaming constituted his sole 
occupation during this period. 

He had married, in 1816, the daughter of a dalesman at 
the wayside cottage near by, known to tourists as "The 
Nab"; and aroused finally by domestic necessities, he 
partially subdued his enemy and engaged in productive 
literary work. In 1S21 his first paper appeared in the 
London Magazine, entitled Confessions of an Opium- 
Eater, being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar. It 
was widely read; the author was immediately in.-n It- 
famous; and for many years the public hailed with delight 
any article signed by the "English Opium-Eater." All 
his best work, comprising about one hundred and fifty 
articles, appeared in magazines, mainly in the London 
Magazine, Blackwood's, T a it's, and Hogg's Instructor. 
His connection with Blackwood's naturally led him to re- 
move, in 1830, to Edinburgh, where he died December 8, 
1859. From 1840 his home was a secluded cottage at 
Lasswade, seven miles from town. 

The eccentric appearance and habits of De Quincey 
have always been a fertile theme for anecdote. His 
figure was small and fragile, with a fine intellectual head 
and lofty brow, "rising disproportionately high over his 
small, wrinkly visage and gentle, deep-set eyes." He 
says of himself: "A more worthless body than his own, 
the author is free to confess, cannot be. It is his pride 
to believe that it is the very ideal of a base, crazy, despica- 
ble human system that hardly ever could have been meant 
to be seaworthy for two days under the ordinary storms 
and wear and tear of life." He was as great a walker as 
Wordsworth, delighting especially in nocturnal rambles. 
He could keep no account of money or time, being, in the 
conduct of his finances, as picturesquely incompetent as 



INTRODUCTION 1 

Goldsmith. It is said that he once stopped at Wilson's 
to escape a shower and remained nearly a year. He 
studiously avoided society, but when secured — usually 
by stratagem — for an evening at the tables of the great, 
his conversation was as brilliant as that of Macaulay. 
Those who heard him, speak with enthusiasm of "the 
magic of his talk, its sweet and subtle ripples of anecdote 
and suggestion, its witching splendor when he rose to his 
highest." "The talk might be of beeves, and he could 
grapple with them, if expected to do so; but his musical 
cadences were not in keeping with such work, and in a 
few minutes (not without some strictly logical sequence) 
he would escape at will from beeves to butterflies, and 
thence to the soul's immortality, to Plato, and Kant, 
and Schelling, and Fichte, to Milton's early years and 
Shakspere's sonnets, to Wordsworth and Coleridge, 
to Homer and /Eschylus, to St. Thomas of Aquino, St. 
Basil, and St. Chrysostom." 

"An obvious characteristic of De Quincey's writings, ,, 
says Professor Masson, "is their extreme multifariousness. 
They range over an extraordinary extent of ground, the 
subjects of which they principally treat being themselves 
of the most diverse kinds, while their illustrative refer- 
ences and allusions shoot through a perfect wilderness of 
miscellaneous scholarship." His essays upon meta- 
physical topics, theology, and political economy are chiefly 
interesting as examples of his speculative tendency and 
his remarkable power of analysis and illustration. His 
best biographical papers are the Recollections of the Lake 
Poets, Dr. Parr, Richard Bentley, Shakspere, and the 
Last Days of Immanuel Kant. Some of his finest work is 
contained in the papers on Rhetoric and Style. His pe- 
culiar descriptive powers are illustrated in the Revolt of 
the Tartars, The Spanish Nun, and Three Memorable 



8 INTRODUCTION 

Murders, and the ghastly humor of his essay On Murder 
Considered as One of the Fine Arts is without a parallel. 
But probably the finest achievement of his genius is the 
descriptive writing, in " impassioned prose," as he him- 
self styled it, of the Confessions, Suspiria de Profundis, 
Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow, Vision of Sudden Death, 
and Dream Fugue. "The Dream Fugue is of no great 
compass," says Peter Bayne, "but we think that it would 
alone have been sufficient to secure a literary immortality." 



DE QUINCEY'S STYLE 

The peculiar eminence of De Quincey is due, not to the 
matter, but to the manner, of his writings. In his own 
period he was read as a brilliant, somewhat sensational, 
and altogether fascinating magazine writer ; to-day he is 
read and studied, never for his facts and seldom for his 
opinions, but as a master of English prose style. He was 
essentially a poet, who could best express himself in prose, 
and in that portion of his work that has become classic 
he sought to demonstrate that certain realms of literary 
expression usually conceded exclusively to verse can with 
ample justice be added to the domain of prose. This 
new form of poetic expression he described as a "mode 
of impassioned prose, ranging under no precedents that 
I am aware of in any literature." Such prose was not 
entirely new; Milton and Sir Thomas Browne had written 
passages of magnificent prose, rhythmical in its move- 
ment, and recording nobly imaginative and exalted states 
of mind; and these authors, together with Taylor and the 
German prose-poet, Jean Paul Richter, were strong influ- 
ences with De Quincey. It is therefore unfortunate that 
he did not explain the distinction which he had in mind 
when speaking of a special "mode" of poetic prose. His 
meaning, however, has been worked out inferentially by 
Professor Masson from those writings which were mani- 
festly intended to exemplify the theory. 

"Our interpretation of his meaning," says Masson, "is 
that, while he was willing to take his chance of being 

9 



10 INTRODUCTION 

reputed capable of eloquent or impassioned writing in 
the general sense, what he reserved as the 'mode of im- 
passioned prose' in which he could claim to be singular 
was a kind of new lyrical prose that could undertake the 
expression of feelings till then supposed unutterable ex- 
cept in verse. Oratory in some of its extremes — as when 
the feeling to be expressed is peculiarly keen and ecstatic 

— does tend to pass into song or metrical lyric ; and De 
Quincey, in order to extend the powers of prose in this 
extreme and difficult direction, proposed to institute, one 
may say, a new form of prose literature nameable as the 
prose-lyric." 

"All sound theorists are agreed in some variety or other 
of that definition of poetry which makes it to consist essen- 
tially in a particular kind of matter or mental product, 

— viz. the matter or product of the faculty or mood of 
mind called Imagination or Phantasy." But "there are 
peculiar kinds of phantasy for which prose in all ages 
has felt itself incompetent, or which it has been too shame- 
faced to attempt. Such, in especial, are the visionary 
phantasies that form themselves in the poetic mind in its 
most profound fits of solitary self-musing. . . . Now, 
as De Quincey had been a dreamer all his life, with an 
abnormal faculty of dreaming at work in him constitu- 
tionally from his earliest infancy, and with the qualifica- 
tion moreover that he had unlocked the terrific potencies 
of opium for the generation of dreams beyond the human, 
his idea seems to have been that, if prose would but exert 
itself, it could compass, almost equally with verse, or 
even better, the representation of some forms at least of 
dream-experience and dream-phantasmagory. Add this 
idea to that other of the possibility of a prose-lyric that 
should rival the verse-lyric in the ability to express the 
keenest and rarest forms of human feeling, or suppose the 



INTRODUCTION 11 

two ideas combined, and De Quincey's conception of the 
exact nature of his service towards the extension of the 
liberties and powers of English prose will be fully appre- 
hended." 

De Quincey speaks incidentally of his style as "an 
elaborate and pompous sunset." This suggests the 
painter, but it was the musician whose art he chiefly emu- 
lated. Etuskin, the most eminent prose-poet after De 
Quincey, — and Pater must not l>e forgotten, — in his 
descriptions took account of all the material and visible 
effects of color in his subject; De Quincey, to a similarly 
extreme degree, took account of the musical possibilities 
of his theme. His color is tone color. For the descrip- 
tion of the gorgeous phantasies of dreams and of ecstatic 
emotion he would make good the inadequacies of ordinary 
word symbols by appropriating the utilities of sound 
symbols. If we call Ruskin's description "word-painting," 
we may perhaps call De Quincey's description word- 
music. He sought to identify poetic expression and 
musical expression — as Sidney Lanier did, in a more 
technical and exact way — or, by combining the modes 
of verse and music, to produce an entirely new vehicle of 
expression, a new "mode" of prose. 

The result of his experiment was a product of rhyth- 
mical harmonies, at times varied and broadened to 
symphonic proportions, of unparalleled beauty and effec- 
tiveness. Language was made to exercise a new function, 
to thrill the emotions by a direct sensuous appeal, like 
the appeal of harp strings or organ tubes. It was this 
peculiar, extraordinary power that so stirred Mrs. Brown- 
ing when reading one of the Blackwood papers, which, she 
says, "my heart trembled through from end to end." 
Let the mind of any reader be once caught by the musical 
scheme of the Dream Fugue, and it will be swept on from 



12 INTRODUCTION 

movement to movement, thrilled and enraptured, with 
increasing and compelling intensity, until finally absorbed 
in the exaltation of the triumphal climax at the close, 
like the climacteric close of a magnificent orchestra. 

Naturally the vocabulary of De Quincey's poetic prose 
is largely Latinized. In no other way could he secure the 
sustained rhythms and stately cadences accessary to his 
purpose. Naturally, too, his sentence structure tends 
largely to the periodic form. Says Minto: " His sentences 
are stately, elaborate, crowded with qualifying clauses 
and parenthetical allusions, to a degree unparalleled 
among modern writers." In the revision of his work 
we find him constantly substituting for simple and col- 
loquial phrases more sonorous Latin equivalents. But 
in this, as in other respects, his impassioned prose is 
sharply distinguished from his ordinary prose. His 
work is full of stylistic extremes and contradictions; no 
author ever could descend so swiftly from the sublime 
to the ridiculous. In his use of common, vulgar, unwashed 
Saxon, current slang, and the argot of rascallions of every 
type, he could keep pace with the best roisterers of Shak- 
spere's street scenes; and the taste with which he intro- 
duced comic features is often so questionable as to be 
quite unaccountable. His humor was a wayward ten- 
dency over which he seemed unable to exercise any 
artistic restraint whatsoever; he could no more resist a 
joke, even of the extremest ineptitude, than Lowell could 
resist an impertinent pun. In one of his prefaces he 
acknowledges this bent for "unseasonable levity/' a 
term generously conceded, but all too mild to cover his 
many derelictions of taste in this respect. 

In one of the minor features of his style, however, De 
Quincey was masterly. The minuteness and circum- 
stantiality of detail with which he describes events, together 



INTRODUCTION 13 

with a dramatic handling of his material, produce an illu- 
sion of reality quite as effective as that of Defoe. He 
is most painstaking and serious when perpetrating his 
most deliberate hoax, culling words from the vast re- 
sources of his vocabulary and weighing and discriminating 
them with scrupulous exactitude in respect to fine shades 
of meaning, giving to his descriptions a verisimilitude 
that baffles all attempts to disentangle his truth from his 
fiction. It was doubtless this peculiar effectiveness in 
narration and description, as in the Flight of a Tartar 
Tribe and the Three Memorable Murders, for example, 
that led Saintsbury to say: "Probably more boys have 
in the last forty years been brought to a love of literature 
proper by De Quincey than by any other writer whatever/' 



CRITICAL APPRECIATIONS 

De Quincey's fame, established in his lifetime, has 
been growing ever since, and is still growing. He has, 
one may say, a constituency of special admirers over all 
the English-speaking world; and, by very evident signs, 
the circle of this constituency is every year extending 
itself. And why ? Because every year it is more and 
more widely recognized that this strange man, dead now 
so many years ago, is one of the princes of English prose 
literature, and an almost unique personality in the whole 
history of English literature, whether in prose or in verse. 
. . . The English Mail-Coach and the Suspiria de Pro- 
fundis have a certain interconnection, and possess be- 
tween them the supreme interest in the class to which they 
belong. The first two sections of The English Mail- 
Coach are noble pieces of prose-poetry, and more success- 
ful, all in all, I think, than the appended Dream Fugue. 
Though that is an extraordinary piece of writing, too, 
and gains on one, perhaps, by repeated reading. The 
first three fragments of the Suspiria, besides being but 
a kind of wreckage from prior materials, are somewhat 
didactic in their tenor, and only prepare the way, and that 
rather raggedly, for the Memorial Suspiria, and the frag- 
ments called Savannah-la-Mar and Levana and Our 
Ladies of Sorrow. Most memorable pieces of impassioned 
prose-phantasy are all these three ; but it is the last that 
is transcendent. Even alone, that would have made 
De Quincey immortal. 

— David Masson, Prefaces to De Quincey's Works. 
14 



INTRODUCTION 15 

De Quincey is sometimes noisy and flatulent, sometimes 
trivial, sometimes unpardonably discursive. But when he 
is at his best, the rapidity of his mind, its lucidity, its 
humor and good sense, the writer's passionate loyalty 
to letters, and his organ-melody of style, command our 
deep respect. He does not, like the majority of his criti- 
cal colleagues, approach literature for purposes of research, 
but to obtain moral effects. De Quincey, a dreamer of 
beautiful dreams, disdained an obstinate vassalage to 
mere matters of fact, but sought with intense concen- 
tration of effort after a conscientious and profound psy- 
chology of letters. 

— Edmund Gosse's Modern English Literature. 

Even at his very best, he was not a writer who could be 
trusted to keep himself at that best. His reading was 
enormous — nearly as great, perhaps, as Southey's, 
though in still less popular directions — and he would 
sometimes drag it in rather inappropriately. He had an 
unconquerable and sometimes very irritating habit of 
digression, of divagation, of aside. And, worst of all, his 
humor, which in its own peculiar vein of imaginative 
grotesque has seldom been surpassed, was liable con- 
stantly to degenerate into a kind of labored trifling, 
inexpressibly exasperating to the nerves. He could 
be simply dull ; and he can seldom be credited with the 
possession of what may be called literary tact. 

Yet his merits were such as to give him no superior in 
his own manner among the essayists, and hardly any 
among the prose writers of the century. He, like Wilson, 
and probably before Wilson, deliberately aimed at a style 
of gorgeous elaboration, intended not exactly for com- 
mon use, but for use when required ; and he achieved it. 
Certain well-known passages in the Confessions of an 
English Opium-Eater , in the Autobiography, in the English 



16 INTRODUCTION 

Mail-Coach, in Our Ladies of Sorrow, and elsewhere, are 
unsurpassed in English or out of it for imaginative splendor 
of imagery, suitably reproduced in words. Nor was this 
De Quincey's only, though it was his most precious gift. 
He had a singular, though, as has been said, a very un- 
trustworthy faculty of humor, both grim and quaint. He 
was possessed of extraordinary dialectic ingenuity, a little 
alloyed no doubt by a tendency to wire-drawn and over- 
subtle minuteness, such as besets the born logician who 
is not warned of his danger either by a strong vein of 
common sense or by constant sojourn in the world. He 
could expound and describe admirably; he had a thor- 
ough grasp of the most complicated subjects when he did 
not allow will-o'-the-wisps to lure him into letting it go, 
and could narrate the most diverse kinds of action. — 
George Saintsbury's History of Nineteenth Century Literature. 
One may fancy that if De Quincey's language were 
emptied of all meaning whatever, the mere sound of the 
words would move us, as the lovely word Mesopotamia 
moved Whitefield's hearers. The sentences are so deli- 
cately balanced, and so skillfully constructed, that his 
finer passages fix themselves in the memory without the 
aid of meter. Humbler writers are content if they can get 
through a single phrase without producing a jar. They 
aim at keeping up a steady jog-trot, which shall not give 
actual pain to the jaws of the readers. Even our great 
writers generally settle down to a stately but monotonous 
gait, after the fashion of Johnson or Gibbon, or are con- 
tent with adopting a style as transparent and inconspicu- 
ous as possible. Language, according to the common 
phrase, is the dress of thought; and that dress is best, 
according to modern canons of taste, which attracts least 
attention from its wearer. De Quincey scorns this sneer- 
ing maxim of prudence, and boldly challenges our admira- 



INTRODUCTION 17 

tion by appearing in the richest coloring that can be got 
out of the dictionary. His language deserves a commenda- 
tion sometimes bestowed by ladies upon rich garments, 
that it is capable of standing up by itself. The form is 
so admirable that, for purposes of criticism, we must con- 
sider it as something apart from the substance. The 
most exquisite passages in De Quincey's writings are all 
more or less attempts to carry out the idea expressed in 
the title of the Dream Fugue. They are intended to be 
musical compositions, in which words have to play the 
part of notes. They are impassioned, not in the sense 
of expressing any definite sentiment, but because, from 
the structure and combination of the sentences, they 
harmonize with certain phases of emotion. It is in the 
success with which he produces such effects as these that 
De Quincey may fairly claim to be almost, if not quite, 
unrivaled in our language. Melancholy and an awe- 
stricken sense of the vast and vague are the emotions 
which he communicates with the greatest power ; though 
the melancholy is too dreamy to deserve the name of 
passion, and the terror of the infinite is not explicitly 
connected with any religious emotion. It is a proof of 
the fineness of his taste that he scarcely ever falls into 
bombast. We tremble at his audacity in accumulating 
gorgeous phrases; but we confess that he is justified by 
the result. I know of no other modern writer who has 
soared into the same regions with so uniform and easy a 
flight. — Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Library. 

De Quincey ranges with great freedom over the ac- 
cumulated wealth of the language, his capacious memory 
giving him a prodigious command of words. His range is 
perhaps wider than either Macaulay's or Carlyle's. From 
various causes he makes an excessive use of Latinized 
phraseology. First, his ear was deeply enamored of a 
c 



18 INTRODUCTION 

dignified rhythm; none but long words of Latin origin 
/ were equal to the lofty march of his periods. Secondly, by 
the use of Latinized and gwasi-technical terms, he gained 
greater precision than by the use of homely words of 
looser signification. And thirdly, it was part of his 
peculiar humor to write concerning common objects, in 
unfamiliar language. . . . Explicitness of connection is 
the chief merit of De Quincey's paragraphs. He cannot 
be said to observe any other principle. He is carried into 
violation of all the other rules by his inveterate habit of 
digression. Often upon a mere casual suggestion he 
branches off into a digression of several pages, sometimes 
even digressing from the subject of his first digression. 
His general structure is not simple. Long periods, each 
embodying a flock of clauses, are abstruse reading. Even 
his explicitness of connection has not its full natural 
effect of making the effort of comprehension easy. . . . 
His prevailing characteristic is elaborate stateliness. He 
finds the happiest exercise of his powers in sustained 
flights through the region of the sublime. He takes rank 
with Milton as one of our greatest masters of stately 
cadence, as well as of sublime composition. If one may 
trust one's ear for a general impression, Milton's melody 
is sweeter and more varied ; but for magnificent effects, 
at least in prose, the palm must probably be assigned to 
De Quincey. 

— Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature. 



BIBLIOGKAPHY 

The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey : Edited by 
David Masson. 14 vols. New York, Macmillan & Co., 1889- 
1890. This is the standard edition ; each volume contains a 
preface and notes by the editor. 

The Uncollected Writings of Thomas De Quincey : Edited by 
James Hogg. 2 vols. London, 1890. 

The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey : Edited by 
A. H. Japp. [H. A. Page] 2 vols. London, 1891-1893. 

Selections from De Quincey : Edited by M. II. Turk (Athe- 
nseum Press Series). Boston, 1902. 

David Masson's Thomas De Quincey (English Men of Letters 
Series). The most serviceable biography. 

A. H. Japp's [H. A. Page] Thomas De Quincey : His Life 
and Writings. London, 1890. The standard biography. 

H. S. Salt's De Quincey (Bell's Miniature Series of Great 
Writers). 

J. Hogg's De Quincey and his Friends, Personal Recollections, 
Souvenirs, and Anecdotes. London, 1895. 

Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Library. Vol. I, 1892. 

George Saintsbury's Essays in English Literature, First 
Series. 

Augustine Birrell's Essays about Men, Women, and Books. 

William Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature. 

T. W. Hunt's English Prose and Prose Writers. 

H. S. Salt's Literary Sketches. London, 1888. 

E. T. Mason's Personal Traits of British Authors. New 
York, 1885. 

David Masson's Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, etc. London, 
1881. 

G. P. Lathrop's Some Aspects of De Quincey. Atlantic 
Monthly, November, 1877. 

19 



20 INTRODUCTION 

E. B. Chancellor's Literary Types. New York, 1896. 

Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature : Article by 
G. Gregory Smith. 

Library of the World's Best Literature : Article by George 
R. Carpenter. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica : Article by J. R. Findlay. 

Henry Craik's English Prose Selections : Critical article by 
R. Brimley Johnson. 

Peter Bayne's Essays in Biography and Criticism. First 
Series. 

J. Scott Clark's A Study of English Prose Writers. New 
York, 1898. 



SELECTIONS FROM DE QUINCEY 

JOAN OF ARC 1 

IN REFERENCE TO M. MICHELET'S HISTORY OF FRANCE 

What is to be thought of her? What is to be 
thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and 
forests of Lorraine, that — like the Hebrew shep- 
herd boy from the hills and forests of Judea — rose 
suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of 5 
the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral 

i tt j^ rc ".- — Modern France, that should know a great deal hetter 
than myself, insists that the name is not D' Arc — i.e., of Arc — but 
Dare. Now it happens sometimes that, if a person whose position 
guarantees his access to the best information will content himself 
with gloomy dogmatism, striking the table with his fist, and saying 
in a terrific voice, "It is so, and there's an end of it," one bows 
deferentially, and submits. But, if, unhappily for himself, won by 
this docility, he relents too amiably into reasons and arguments, 
probably one raises an insurrection against him that may never be 
crushed; for in the fields of logic one can skirmish, perhaps, as 
well as he. Had he confined himself to dogmatism, he would have 
intrenched his position in darkness, and have hidden his own vul- 
nerable points. But coming down to base reasons he lets in light, 
and one sees where to plant the blows. Now, the worshipful reason 
of modern France for disturbing the old received spelling is that 
Jean Hordal, a descendant of La Pucelle's brother, spelled the name 
Dare in 1612. But what of that? It is notorious that what small 
matter of spelling Providence had thought fit to disburse among 
man in the seventeenth century was all monopolized by printers ; 
now, M. Hordal was not a printer. 

21 



22 JOAN OF ARC 

solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to t lie 
more perilous station at the right hand of kings? 
The Hebrew hoy inaugurated his patriotic mission 
by an act, by a victorious act, such as do man could 

sdeny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her 
story as it was read by those who -aw her nearest. 
Adverse armies bore witness to the hoy as do pre- 
tender; hut bo they did to the gentle girl. Judged 
by the voices of all who saw them from <i station of 

\0good trill, both were found true and loyal to any 
promises involved in their firsl acts. Enemies it 

was that made the difference between theirs' 
quent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendor and a 
noonday prosperity, both personal and public, that 

15 rang through the records of his people, and became 
a byword among his posterity for a thousand years, 
until the scepter was departing from Judah. The 
poor, forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself 
from that cup of rest which she had secured for 

20 France*. She never sang together with the songs 

that rose in her native Domreiny as echoes to the 

departing steps of invaders. She mingled not in 

the festal dances at Yatlcouleurs which celebrated 
in rapt ure the redemption of France. No! for her 

26Voice was then silent: no! for her feet were dust. 
Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl! whom, from 
earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and 
self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges 
for thy truth, that never once — no. not foramoment 

30of weakness — didst thou revel in the vision of 
coronets and honor from man. Coronets for thee ! 



JOAN OF ARC 2?> 

Oh, no! Honors, if they come when all is over, 
are for those that share thy blood. 1 Daughter of 
Domremv. when the gratitude of thy king shall 
awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. 
Call her. King of France, but she will not hear thee. 5 
( Jite Iter by the apparitors to come and receive a robe 
of honor, but she will be found en contumace. 
When the thunders of universal Prance, as even yet 
may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor 
shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy 10 
ear. young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for live 
centuries. To Buffer and to do. that was thy por- 
tion in this life; that was thy destiny ; and not for 
a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou 
saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in the grave 15 
is long; let me use that lite, so transitory, for the 
glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort 
the sleep which is so long ! This pure creature — 
pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self- 
interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious 20 
— never once (lid this holy child, as regarded herself, 
relax from her belief in the darkness that was travel- 
ing to meet her. She might not prefigure the very 
manner of her death ; she saw not in vision, perhaps, 
the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectator- 25 
without end, on every road, pouring into Rouen as to 
a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, 
the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that 
lurked but here and there, until nature and imperish- 

1 " 77jo.se that share thy blood" : — A collateral relative of 
Joanna's was subsequently ennobled by the title of Du Lys. 



24 JOAN OF ARC 

able truth broke loose from artificial restraints — 
these might not be apparent through the mists of the 
hurrying future. But the voice that called her to 
death, thai she heard forever. 
5 Great was the throne of France even in those days, 
and great was he that sat upon it; but well Joanna 
knew that n >t the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was 
for her ; but, on the contrary, that she was for them : 
not she by them, but they by her, should rise from 

10 the dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and 
for centuries had the privilege to spread their beauty 
over land and sea, until, in another century, the 
wrath of God and man combined to wither them; 
but well Joanna knew, early at Domremy she had 

16 read that bitter truth, that tin 4 lilies of Prance would 
decorate no garland for her. Flower nor bud, bell 
nor blossom, would ever bloom for her! 

But stay. What reason is there for taking up this 
subject of Joanna precisely in the spring of 1S47? 

20 Might it not have been left till the spring of 1947, 
or, perhaps, left till called for? Yes. but it is railed 
for, and clamorously. You are aware, reader, that 
amongst the many original thinkers whom modern 
France has produced, one of the reputed leaders is 

2.-) M. Michelet. All these writers are of a revolutionary 
cast ; not in a political sense merely, but in all senses ; 
mad, oftentimes, as March hares; crazy with the 
laughing gas of recovered liberty; drunk with the 
wine cup of their mighty Revolution, snorting, 

30 whinnying, throwing up their heels, like wild horses 



JOAN OF ARC 25 

in the boundless pampas, and running races of de- 
fiance with snipes, or with the winds, or with their 
own shadows, if they can find nothing else to chal- 
lenge. Some time or other, I, that have leisure to 
read, may introduce you, that have not, to two or 5 
three dozen of these writers; of whom I can assure 
you beforehand that they are often profound, and at 
intervals are even as impassioned as if they were 
come of our best English blood. But now, confining 
our attention to M. Michelet, we in England — who 10 
know him best by his worst book, the book against 
priests, etc. — know him disadvantageously. That 
book is a rhapsody of incoherence. But his "His- 
tory of France" is quite another thing. A man, in 
whatsoever craft he sails, cannot stretch away out 15 
of sight when he is linked to the windings of the shore 
by towing-ropes of History. Facts, and the conse- 
quences of facts, draw the writer back to the fal- 
coner's lure from the giddiest heights of speculation. 
Here, therefore — in his "France" — if not always 20 
free from flightiness, if now and then off like a rocket 
for an airy wheel in the clouds, M. Michelet, with 
natural politeness, never forgets that he has left a 
large audience waiting for him on earth, and gazing 
upward in anxiety for his return; return, therefore, 25 
he does. But History, though clear of certain temp- 
tat ions in one direction, has separate dangers of its 
own. It is impossible so to write a history of France, 
or of England — works becoming every hour more 
indispensable to the inevitably political man of this 30 
day — without perilous openings for error. If I, 



26 JOAN OF ARC 

for instance, on the part of England, should happen 
to turn my labors into that channel, and (on the 
model of Lord Percy going to Chevy Chase) 

"A vow to God should make 
5 My pleasure iu th% Michelet woods 

Three summer days to take," 

probably, from simple delirium, I might hunt M. 

Michelet into delirium tremens. Two Btrong angels 

stand by the side of History, whether French his- 

lotory or English, as heraldic supporters: the angel 

of research on the left hand, that must read millions 
of dusty parchments, and of pages blotted with lies; 
the angel of meditation on the right hand, that must 
cleanse these lying records with fire, even as of old the 

15 draperies of asbestos were cleansed, and must quicken 
them into regenerated life. Willingly 1 acknowl- 
edge that no man will ever avoid innumerable errors 
of detail; with bo vast a compass of ground to trav- 
erse, this is impossible; but such errors (though I 

20 have a bushel on hand, at M. Michelet 's service) are 
not the game 1 chase: it is the bitter and unfair 
spirit in which M. Michelet writes against England. 
Even that, after all, is but my secondary object ; 
the real one is Joanna, the Pucelle d'< hleans herself. 

25 I am not going to write the history of La Pucelle: 
to do this, or even circumstantially to report the 
history of her persecution and bitter death, of her 
struggle with false witnesses and with ensnaring 
judges, it would be necessary to have before us all 

30 the documents, and therefore the collection only now 



JOAN OF ARC 27 

forthcoming in Paris. 1 But my purpose is narrower. 
There have been great thinkers, disdaining the care- 
less judgments of contemporaries, who have thrown 
themselves boldly od the judgmenl of a far posterity, 
thai should have had time to review, to ponder, to 5 
compare. There have been great actors on the stage 
of tragic humanity that might, with the same depth 
of confidence, have appealed from the levity of com- 
patriot friends — too heartless for the sublime inter- 
est of their story, and too impatient for the laborio 
of sifting its perplexities — to the magnanimity and 
justice of enemies. To this class belongs the Maid of 
Are. The ancient Romans were too faithful to the 
ideal of grandeur in themselves not to relent, after a 
generation or two. before the grandeur of Hannibal. 15 
Mithridates. a more doubtful person, yet, merely 
for the magic perseverance of his indomitable malice, 
won from the same Romans the only real honor 
that ever he rec< ived on earth. And we English 
have ever shown the same homage to stubborn 20 
enmity. To work unflinchingly for the ruin of 
England : to say through life, by word and by deed, 
Ddenda ■ st Anglia Victrix! — that one purpose of 
malice, faithfully pursued, has quartered some people 
upon our national funds of homage as by a perpetual 25 
annuity. Better than an inheritance of service 
rendered to England herself has sometimes proved 
the most insane hatred to England. Hyder Ali, 

1 " Only now forthcoming" : — In 1847 began the publication 
(from official records) of Joanna's trial. It was interrupted, I fear, 
by the convulsions of 1848 ; and whether even yet finished I do not 
know. 



28 JOAN OF ARC 

even his son Tippoo, though so far inferior, and 
Napoleon, have all benefited by this disposition 
among ourselves to exaggerate the merit of diabolic 
enmity. Not one of these men was ever capable, in 

5 a solitary instance, of praising an enemy (what do 
you say to that, reader?); and yet in their behalf, 
we consent to forget, not their crimes only, but 
(which is worse) their hideous bigotry and anti- 
magnanimous egotism — for nationality it was not. 

loSuffren, and some half dozen of other French 
nautical heroes, because rightly they did us all the 
mischief they could (which was really great), are 
names justly reverenced in England. On the same 
principle, La Pucelle d 'Orleans, the victorious enemy 

15 of England, has been destined to receive her deepest 
commemoration from the magnanimous justice of 
Englishmen. 

Joanna, as we in England should call her, but 
according to her own statement, Jeanne (or, as M. 

20 Michelet asserts, Jean 1 ) D'Arc was born at Domremy, 



!" Jean" : — M. Michelet asserts that there was a mystical 
meaning at that era in calling a child Jean; it implied a secret 
commendation of a child, if not a dedication, to St. John the evan- 
gelist, the beloved disciple, the apostle of love and mysterious 
visions. But, really, as the name was so exceedingly common, 
few people will detect a mystery in calling a boy by the name of 
Jack, though it does seem mysterious to call a girl Jack. It may 
be less so in France, where a beautiful practice has always pre- 
vailed of giving a hoy his mother's name — preceded and strengthened 
by a male name, as Charles Anne, Victor Victoire. In cases where 
a mother's memory has been unusually dear to a son, this vocal 
memento of her, locked into the circle of his own name, gives to it 
the tenderness of a testamentary relic, or a funeral ring. I pre- 
sume, therefore, that La Pucelle must have borne the baptismal 



JOAN OF ARC 29 

a village on the marches of Lorraine and Champagne, 
and dependent upon the town of Vaucouleurs. I 
have called her a Lorrainer, not simply because the 
word is prettier, but because Champagne too odiously 
reminds us English of what are for us imaginary 5 
wines — which, undoubtedly, La Pucelle tasted as 
rarely as we English : we English, because the cham- 
pagne of London is chiefly grown in Devonshire; 
La Pucelle, because the champagne of Champagne 
never, by any chance, flowed into the fountain of 10 
Domremy, from which only she drank. M. Miche- 
let will have her to be a Champenoise, and for no 
better reason than that she "took after her father," 
who happened to be a Champenois. 

These disputes, however, turn on refinements too 15 
nice. Domremy stood upon the frontiers, and, 
like other frontiers, produced a mixed race, represent- 
ing the cis and the trans. A river (it is true) formed 
the boundary line at this point — the river Meuse; 
and that, in old days, might have divided the popula- 20 
tions; but in these days it did not; there were 
bridges, there were ferries, and weddings crossed 
from the right bank to the left, Here lay two great 
roads, not so much for travelers that were few, as 
for armies that were too many by half. These two 25 
roads, one of which was the great highroad between 
France and Germany, decussated at this very point; 
which is a learned way of saying that they formed 
a St. Andrew's Cross, or letter X. I hope the corn- 
name of Jeanne Jean ; the latter with no reference, perhaps, to so 
sublime a person as St. John, but simply to some relative. 



30 JOAN OF ARC 

positor will choose a good large X ; in which case the 
point of intersection, the locus of conflux and inter- 
section for these four diverging arms, will finish the 
reader's geographical education, by showing him 

5 to a hair's-breadth where it was that Domremy 
stood. These roads, so grandly situated, as great 
trunk arteries between two mighty realms, 1 and 
haunted forever by wars or rumors of wars, de- 
cussated (for anything I know to the contrary) 

10 absolutely under Joanna's bedroom window; one 
rolling away to the right, past M. D' Arc's old barn, 
and the other unaccountably preferring to sweep 
round that odious man's pigsty to the left. 

On whichever side of the border chance had 

15 thrown Joanna, the same love to France would have 
been nurtured. For it is a strange fact, noticed by 

. M. Michelet and others, that the Dukes of Bar and 
Lorraine had for generations pursued the policy of 
eternal warfare with France on their own account, 

20 yet also of eternal amity and league with France in 
case anybody else presumed to attack her. Let peace 
settle upon France, and before long you might rely 
upon seeing the little vixen Lorraine flying at the 
throat of France. Let France be assailed by a for- 

25midable enemy, and instantly you saw a Duke of 
Lorraine insisting on having his own throat cut in 
support of France; which favor accordingly was 
cheerfully granted to him in three great successive 

1 And reminding one of that inscription, so justly admired by 
Paul Riehter, which a Russian Czarina placed on a guide-post near 
Moscow : This is the road that leads to Constantinople. 



JOAN OF AUG 31 

battles: twice by the English, viz., at Crecy and 
Agincourt, once by the Sultan at Nicopolis. 

This sympathy with France during great eclipses, in 
ihose that during ordinary seasons were always teas- 
ing her with brawls and guerrilla inroads, strength- 5 
ened the natural piety to France of those that were 
confessedly the children of her own house. The out- 
posts of France, as one may call the great frontier 
provinces, were of all localities the most devoted 
to the Fleurs de Lys. To witness, at any great 10 
crisis, the generous devotion to these lilies of the little 
fiery cousin that in gentler weather was forever 
tilting at the breast of France, could not but fan 
the zeal of France's legitimate daughters; while to 
occupy a post of honor on the frontiers against an 15 
old hereditary enemy of France would naturally 
stimulate this zeal by a sentiment of martial pride, 
by a sense of danger always threatening, and of 
hatred always smoldering. That great four-headed 
road was a perpetual memento to patriotic ardor. 20 
To say "This way lies the road to Paris, and that 
other way to Aix-la-Chapelle ; this to Prague, that 
to Vienna," nourished the warfare of the heart by 
daily ministrations of sense. The eye that watched 
for the gleams of lance or helmet from the hostile 25 
frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning of 
wheels, made the highroad itself, with its relations to 
centers so remote, into a manual of patriotic duty. 

The situation, therefore, locally, of Joanna was full 
of profound suggestions to a heart that listened for 30 
the stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely 



32 JOAN OF ARC 

were in motion. But, if the place were grand, the 
time, the burden of the time, was far more so. The 
air overhead in its upper chambers was hurtling with 
the obscure sound ; was dark with sullen fermenting 
5 of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and 
thirty years. The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's 
childhood had reopened the wounds of France. 
Crecy and Poictiers, those withering overthrows 
for the chivalry of France, had, before Agincourt 

10 occurred, been tranquilized by more than half a 
century ; but this resurrection of their trumpet wails 
made the whole series of battles and endless skir- 
mishes take their stations as parts in one drama. 
The graves that had closed sixty years ago seemed 

15 to fly open in sympathy with a sorrow that echoed 
their own. The monarchy of France labored in 
extremity, rocked and reeled like a ship fighting with 
the darkness of monsoons. The madness of the poor 
king (Charles VI), falling in at such a crisis, like the 

20 case of women laboring in childbirth during the 
storming of a city, trebled the awfulness of the time. 
Even the wild story of the incident which had imme- 
diately occasioned the explosion of this madness — 
the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps 

25 maniacal himself, coming out of a forest at noonday, 
laying his hand upon the bridle of the king's horse, 
checking him for a moment to say, "Oh, king, thou 
art betrayed," and then vanishing, no man knew 
whither, as he had appeared for no man knew what 

so — fell in with the universal prostration of mind that 
laid France on her knees, as before the slow unweav- 



JOAN OF ARC 33 

ing of some ancient prophetic doom. The famines, 
the extraordinary diseases, the insurrections of the 
peasantry up and down Europe — these were chords 
struck from the same mysterious harp; but these 
were transitory chords. There had been others of 5 
deeper and more ominous sound. The termination 
of the Crusades, the destruction of the Templars, 
the Papal interdicts, the tragedies caused or suffered 
by the house of Anjou, and by the Emperor — these 
were full of a more permanent significance. But, 10 
since then, the colossal figure of feudalism was seen 
standing, as it were on tiptoe, at Crecy, for flight 
from earth : that was a revolution unparalleled ; yet 
that was a trifle by comparison with the more fearful 
revolutions that were mining below the Church. 15 
By her own internal schisms, by the abominable 
spectacle of a double Pope — so that no man, except 
through political bias, could even guess which was 
Heaven's vicegerent, and which the creature of Hell 
— the Church was rehearsing, as in still earlier forms 20 
she had already rehearsed, those vast rents in her 
foundations which no man should ever heal. 

These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in 
the skies that to the scientific gazer first caught the 
colors of the new morning in advance. But the 25 
whole vast range alike of sweeping glooms overhead 
dwelt upon all meditative minds, even upon those 
that could not distinguish the tendencies nor de- 
cipher the forms. It was, therefore, not her own 
age alone, as affected by its immediate calamities, 30 
that lay with such weight upon Joanna's mind, but 



34 JOAN OF ARC 

her own age as one section in a vast mysterious 
drama, unweaving through a century back, and 
drawing nearer continually to some dreadful crisis. 
Cataracts and rapids were heard roaring ahead ; and 

5 signs were seen far back, by help of old men's memo- 
ries, which answered secretly to signs now coming 
forward on the eye, even as locks answer to keys. 
It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, 
with such a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic 

10 visions, and hear angelic voices. These voices 
whispered to her forever the duty, self-imposed, of 
delivering France. Five years she listened to these 
monitory voices with internal struggles. At length 
she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way; and 

15 she left her home forever in order to present herself 
at the dauphin's court. 

The education of this poor girl was mean accord- 
ing to the present standard : was ineffably grand, 
according to a purer philosophic standard : and only 

20 not good for our age because for us it would be unat- 
tainable. She read nothing, for she could not read; 
but she had heard others read parts of the Roman 
martyrology. She wept in sympathy with the sad 
" Misereres" of the Romish Church; she rose to 

25 heaven with the glad triumphant "Te Deums" of 
Rome; she drew her comfort and her vital strength 
from the rites of the same Church. But, next after 
these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the ad- 
vantages of her situation. The fountain of Dom- 

3oremy was on the brink of a boundless forest; and it 
was haunted to that degree by fairies that the parish 



JOAN OF ARC 35 

priest (cure) was obliged to read mass there once a 
year, in order to keep them in any decent bounds. 
Fairies are important, even in a statistical view: 
certain weeds mark poverty in the soil ; fairies mark 
its solitude. As surely as the wolf retires before 5 
cities does the fairy sequester herself from the haunts 
of the licensed victualer. A village is too much for 
her nervous delicacy; at most, she can tolerate a 
distant view of a hamlet. We may judge, therefore, 
by the uneasiness and extra trouble which they gave 10 
to the parson, in what strength the fairies mustered 
at Domremy, and, by a satisfactory consequence, 
how thinly sown with men and women must have 
been that region even in its inhabited spots. But 
the forests of Domremy — those were the glories of 15 
the land: for in them abode mysterious powers and 
ancient secrets that towered into tragic strength. 
"Abbeys there were, and abbey windows" — "like 
Moorish temples of the Hindoos" — that exercised 
even princely power both in Lorraine and in the 20 
German Diets. These had their sweet bells that 
pierced the forests for many a league at matins 
or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few 
enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, 
so as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the 25 
region; yet many enough to spread a network or 
awning of Christian sanctity over what else might 
have seemed a heathen wilderness. This sort of 
religious talisman being secured, a man the most 
afraid of ghosts (like myself, suppose, or the reader) 30 
becomes armed into courage to wander for days in 



36 JOAN OF ARC 

their sylvan recesses. The mountains of the Vosges, 
on the eastern frontier of France, have never 
attracted much notice from Europe, except in 1813- 
14 for a few brief months, when they fell within Na- 

5 poleon's line of defense against the Allies. But they 
are interesting for this among other features, that 
they do not, like some loftier ranges, repel woods; 
the forests and the hills are on sociable terms. 
" Live and let live " is their motto. For this reason, 

10 in part, these tracts in Lorraine were a favorite 
hunting-ground with the Carlovingian princes. 
About six hundred years before Joanna's childhood, 
Charlemagne was known to have hunted there. 
That, of itself, was a grand incident in the traditions 

15 of a forest or a chase. In these vast forests, also, 
were to be found (if anywhere to be found) those 
mysterious fawns that tempted solitary hunters 
into visionary and perilous pursuits. Here was seen 
(if any where seen) that ancient stag who was already 

20 nine hundred years old, but possibly a hundred or 
two more, when met by Charlemagne; and the thing 
was put beyond doubt by the inscription upon his 
golden collar. I believe Charlemagne knighted the 
stag; and, if ever he is met again by a king, he ought 

2.->to be made an earl, or, being upon the marches of 
France, a marquis. Observe, I don't absolutely 
vouch for all these things: my own opinion varies. 
On a fine breezy afternoon I am audaciously skepti- 
cal; but as twilight sets in my credulity grows 

30 steadily, till it becomes equal to anything that could 
be desired. And I have heard candid sportsmen 



JOAN OF ARC 37 

declare that, outside of these very forests, they 
laughed loudly at all the dim tales connected with 
their haunted solitudes, but, on reaching a spot 
notoriously eighteen miles deep within them, they 
agreed with Sir Roger de Coverley that a good deal 5 
might be said on both sides. 

Such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) 
connect distant generations with each other, are, 
for that cause, sublime; and the sense of the shad- 
owy, connected with such appearances that reveal 10 
themselves or not according to circumstances, leaves 
a coloring of sanctity over ancient forests, even in 
those minds that utterly reject the legend as a fact. 

But, apart from all distinct stories of that order, 
in any solitary frontier between two great empires — 15 
as here, for instance, or in the desert between Syria 
and the Euphrates — there is an inevitable tendency, 
in minds of any deep sensibility, to people the soli- 
tudes with phantom images of powers that were of 
old so vast. Joanna, therefore, in her quiet occupa-20 
tion of a shepherdess, would be led continually to 
brood over the political condition of her country 
by the traditions of the past no less than by the 
mementoes of the local present. 

M. Michelet, indeed, says that La Pucelle was not 25 
a shepherdess. I beg his pardon; she was. What 
he rests upon I guess pretty well : it is the evidence 
of a woman called Haumette, the most confidential 
friend of Joanna. Now, she is a good witness, and 
a good girl, and I like her; for she makes a naturals 
and affectionate report of Joanna's ordinary life. 



38 JOAN OF ARC 

But still, however good she may be as a witness, 
Joanna is better; and she, when speaking to the 
dauphin, calls herself in the Latin report Bergen I la. 
Even Haumette confesses that Joanna tended sheep 

5 in her girlhood. And I believe that, if Miss Hau- 
mette were taking coffee along with me this very 
evening (February 12, 1S47) — in which there would 
be no subject for scandal or for maiden blushes, be- 
cause I am an intense philosopher, and Miss H. would 

10 be hard upon 450 years old — she would admit the 
following comment upon her evidence to be right. 
A Frenchman, about forty years ago — M. Simond, 
in his "Travels" — mentions accidentally the fol- 
lowing hideous scene as one steadily observed and 

15 watched by himself in chivalrous France not very 
long before the French Revolution: A peasant was 
plowing; and the team that drew his plow was a 
donkey and a woman. Both were regularly har- 
nessed; both pulled alike. This is bad enough; 

20 but the Frenchman adds that, in distributing his 
lashes, the peasant was obviously desirous of being 
impartial ; or, if either of the yokefellows had a right 
to complain, certainly it was not the donkey. Now, 
in any country where such degradation of females 

25 could be tolerated by the state of manners, a woman 
of delicacy would shrink from acknowledging, either 
for herself or her friend, that she had ever been 
addicted to any mode of labor not strictly domestic ; 
because, if once owning herself a praedial servant, 

30 she would be sensible that this confession extended 
by probability in the hearer's thoughts to the having 



JOAN OF ARC 39 

incurred indignities of this horrible kind. Hau- 
mette clearly thinks it more dignified for Joanna to 
have been darning the stockings of her horny-hoofed 
father, M. D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might 
then be suspected of having ever done something 5 
worse. But, luckily, there was no danger of that : 
Joanna never was in service; and my opinion is that 
her father should have mended his owe stockings, 
Bince probably he was the party to make the holes 
in them, as many a better man than D'Arc does — 10 
meaning by that not myself, because, though prob- 
ably a better man than D'Arc, I protest against 
doing anything of the kind. If I lived even with 
Friday in Juan Fernandez, either Friday must do 
all the darning, or else it must go undone. The 15 
better men that I meant were the sailors in the 
British navy, every man of whom mends his own 
stockings. Who else is to do it? Do you suppose, 
reader, that the junior lords of the admiralty are 
under articles to darn for the navy? 20 

The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred 
of D'Arc is this : There was a story current in France 
before the Revolution, framed to ridicule the pauper 
aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees 
and short rent rolls: viz., that a head of such a 25 
house, dating from the Crusades, w r as overheard say- 
ing to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis, " Chevalier, 
as-tu donne au cochon a manger ?" Now, it is clearly 
made out by the surviving evidence that D'Arc 
would much have preferred continuing to say, "Ma 30 
fille, as-tu donne au cochon a manger?" to saying, 



40 JOAN OF ARC 

" Pucelle d 'Orleans, as-tu sauve les fleurs-de-lys?" 
There is an old English copy of verses which argues 
thus: 

u If the man that turnips cries 
5 Cry not when his father dies, 

Then 'tis plain the man had rather 
Have a turnip than his father." 

I cannot say that the logic of these verses was ever 
entirely to my satisfaction. I do not see my way 

10 through it as clearly as could be wished. But I see 
my way most clearly through D'Arc; and the re- 
sult is — that he would greatly have preferred not 
merely a turnip to his father, but the saving a pound 
or so of bacon to saving the Orinamme of France. 

15 It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that the 
title of Virgin or Pucelle had in itself, and apart 
from the miraculous stories about her, a secret 
power over the rude soldiery and partisan chiefs 
of that period ; for in such a person they saw a rep- 

20 resentative manifestation of the Virgin Mary, who, 
in a course of centuries, had grown steadily upon the 
popular heart. 

As to Joanna's supernatural detection of the 
dauphin (Charles VII) among three hundred lords 

25 and knights, I am surprised at the credulity which 
could ever lend itself to that theatrical juggle. Who 
admires more than myself the sublime enthusiasm, 
the rapturous faith in herself, of this pure creature? 
But I am far from admiring stage artifices which not 

30 La Pucelle, but the court, must have arranged; nor 
can surrender myself to the conjurer's legerdemain, 



JOAN OF ARC 41 

such as may be seen every day for a shilling. South- 
ey's "Joan of Arc" was published in 1796. Twenty 
years after, talking with Southey, I was surprised 
to find him still owning a secret bias in favor of Joan, 
founded on her detection of the dauphin. The story, 5 
for the benefit of the reader new to the case, was this : 
La Pucelle was first made known to the dauphin, 
and presented to his court, at Chinon; and here came 
her first trial. By way of testing hor supernatural 
pretensions, she was to find out the royal personage io 
amongst the whole ark of clean and unclean crea- 
tures. Failing in this coup d'essai, she would not 
>i in ply disappoint many a beating heart in the glit- 
tering crowd that on different motives yearned for 
her success, but she would ruin herself, and, as thei:> 
oracle within had told her, would, by ruining herself, 
ruin France. Our own Sovereign Lady Victoria 
rehearses annually a trial not so severe in degree, 
but the same in kind. She " pricks" for sheriffs. 
Joanna pricked for a king. But observe the differ- 20 
ence : our own Lady pricks for two men out of three ; 
Joanna for one man out of three hundred. Happy 
Lady of the Islands and the Orient ! — she can go 
astray in her choice only by one-half : to the extent 
of one-half she must have the satisfaction of being 25 
right. And yet, even with these tight limits to the 
misery of a boundless discretion, permit me, Liege 
Lady, with all loyalty, to submit that now and then 
you prick with your pin the wrong man. But the 
poor child from Domremy, shrinking under the gaze 30 
of a dazzling court — not because dazzling (for in 



42 JOAN OF ARC 

visions she had seen those that were more so), but 
because some of them wore a scoffing smile on their 
features — how should she throw her line into so 
deep a river to angle for a king, where many a gay 
5 creature was sporting that masqueraded as kings 
in dress ! Nay, even more than any true king 
would have done: for, in Southey's version of the 
story, the dauphin says, by way of trying the vir- 
gin's magnetic sympathy with royalty, 

10 " On the throne, 

I the while mingling: with the menial throng, 
Some courtier shall be seated." 

This usurper is even crowned: "the jeweled crown 
shines on a menial's head." But, really, that is 

15" un peu jort" ; and the mob of spectators might 
raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw 
upon the throne, and the dauphin himself, were not 
grazing the shins of treason. For the dauphin 
could not lend more than belonged to him. Accord- 

20ing to the popular notion, he had no crown for him- 
self; consequently none to lend, on any pretense 
whatever, until the consecrated Maid should take 
him to Rheims. This was the popular notion in 
France. But certainly it was the dauphin's interest 

25 to support the popular notion, as he meant to use 
the services of Joanna. For if he were king already, 
what was it that she could do for him beyond Or- 
leans? That is to say, what more than a merely 
military service could she render him? And, above 

30 all, if he were king without a coronation, and with- 



JOAN OF ARC 43 

out the oil from the sacred ampulla, what advantage 
was yet open to him by celerity above his competitor, 
the English boy ? Now was to be a race for a coro- 
nation: he that should win that race carried the 
superstition of France along with him: he that 5 
should first be drawn from the ovens of Rheims was 
under that superstition baked into a king. 

La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to practice 
as a warrior, was put through her manual and 
platoon exercise, as a pupil in divinity, at the bar of 10 
six eminent men in wigs. According to Southey 
(v. 393, bk. hi., in the original edition of his " Joan 
of Arc,") she " appalled the doctors." It's not easy 
to do that: but they had some reason to feel both- 
ered, as that surgeon would assuredly feel bothered 15 
who, upon proceeding to dissect a subject, should 
find the subject retaliating as a dissector upon him- 
self, especially if Joanna ever made the speech to 
them which occupies v. 354-391, bk. hi. It is a 
double impossibility: 1st, because a piracy from 20 
Tindal's "Christianity as old as the Creation" — 
a piracy a parte ante, and by three centuries; 2d, 
it is quite contrary to the evidence on Joanna's 
trial. Southey's "Joan" of a.d. 1796 (Cottle, 
Bristol) tells the doctors, among other secrets, that 25 
she never in her life attended — 1st, Mass; nor 2d, 
the Sacramental Table; nor 3d, Confession. In the 
meantime, all this deistical confession of Joanna's, 
besides being suicidal for the interest of her cause, 
is opposed to the depositions upon both trials. The 30 
very best witness called from first to last deposes that 



44 . JOAN OF ARC 

Joanna attended these rites of her Church even too 
often; was taxed with doing so; and, by blushing, 
owned the charge as a fact, though certainly not as 
a fault. Joanna was a girl of natural piety, that saw 
5 God in forests and hills and fountains, but did not the 
less seek him in chapels and consecrated oratories. 

This peasant girl was self-educated through her 
own natural meditativeness. If the reader turns 
to that divine passage in "Paradise Regained" 
10 which Milton has put into the mouth of our Saviour 
when first entering the wilderness, and musing upon 
the tendency of those great impulses growing within 
himself 

" Oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once 
15 Awakened in me swarm, while I consider 

What from within I feel myself, and hear 
What from without comes often to my ears, 
111 sorting with my present state compared ! 
When I was yet a child, no childish play 
20 To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set 

Serious to learn and know, and thence to do, 
What might be public good ; myself I thought 
Born to that end " 

he will have some notion of the vast reveries which 
25 brooded over the heart of Joanna in early girlhood, 
when the wings were budding that should carry 
her from Orleans to Rheims; when the golden char- 
iot was dimly revealing itself that should carry her 
from the kingdom of France Delivered to the Eternal 
30 Kingdom. 

It is not requisite for the honor of Joanna, nor 
is there in this place room, to pursue her brief career 



JOAN OF ARC 45 

of action. That, though wonderful, forms the 
earthly part of her story; the spiritual part is the 
saintly passion of her imprisonment, trial, and execu- 
tion. It is unfortunate, therefore, for Southey's 
"Joan of Arc" (which, however, should always be 5 
regarded as a juvenile effort), that precisely when her 
real glory begins the poem ends. But this limitation 
of the interest grew, no doubt, from the constraint 
inseparably attached to the law of epic unity. 
Joanna's history bisects into two opposite hemi-io 
spheres, and both could not have been presented to 
the eye in one poem, unless by sacrificing all unity 
of theme, or else by involving the earlier half, as a 
narrative episode, in the latter; which, however, 
might have been done, for it might have been com- 15 
municated to a fellow-prisoner, or a confessor, by 
Joanna herself. It is sufficient, as concerns this 
section of Joanna's life, to say that she fulfilled, 
to the height of her promises, the restoration of the 
prostrate throne. France had become a province 20 
of England, and for the ruin of both, if such a yoke 
could be maintained. Dreadful pecuniary exhaus- 
tion caused the English energy to droop; and that 
critical opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding 
felicity of audacity and suddenness (that were in 25 
themselves portentous) for introducing the wedge 
of French native resources, for rekindling the na- 
tional pride, and for planting the dauphin once more 
upon his feet. When Joanna appeared, he had been 
on the point of giving up the struggle with the Eng- 30 
lish, distressed as they were, and of flying to the 



46 JOAN OF ARC 

south of France. She taught him to blush for such 
abject counsels. She liberated Orleans, that great 
city, so decisive by its fate for the issue of the war, 
and then beleaguered by the English with an elabo- 

5 rate application of engineering skill unprecedented 
in Europe. Entering the city after sunset on the 
29th of April, she sang mass on Sun-lav, May 8th, 
for the entire disappearance of the besieging force. 
On the 29th of June she fought and gained over the 

10 English the decisive battle of 1'atay; on the 9th 
of July she took Troves by a coup-de-main from a 
mixed garrison of English and Burgundians; on the 
15th of that month she carried the dauphin into 
Kheims; on Sunday the 17th .-he crowned him ; and 

15 there she rested from her labor of triumph. All 
that was to be done she had now accomplished; 
what remained was — t<> suffer. 

All this forward movement was her own: except- 
ing one man, the whole council was against her. 

20 Her enemies were all that drew power from earth. 
Her supporters were her own strong enthusiasm, 
and the headlong contagion by which she carried 
this sublime frenzy into the hearts of women, of 
soldiers, and of all who lived by labor. Hence- 

■_':» forward she was thwarted; and the worst error 
that she committed was to lend the -auction of her 
presence to counsels which she had ceased to ap- 
prove. But she had now accomplished the capital 
objects which her own visions had dictated. These 

so involved all the rest. Errors were now less impor- 
tant; and doubtless it had now become more diffi- 



JOAN OF ARC 47 

cult for herself to pronounce authentically what 
were errors. The noble girl had achieved, as by a 
rapture of motion, the capital end of clearing out 
a free space around her sovereign, giving him the 
power to move his arms with effect, and, secondly, 5 
the inappreciable end of winning for that sovereign 
what seemed to all France the heavenly ratification 
of his rights, by crowning him with the ancient 
solemnities. She had made it impossible for the 
English now to step before her. They were caught 10 
in an irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord 
among the uncles of Henry VI, partly to a want of 
funds, but partly to the very impossibility which 
they believed to press with tenfold force upon any 
French attempt to forestall theirs. They laughed 15 
at such a thought : and. while they laughed, she did 
it. Henceforth the single redress for the English 
of this capita] oversight, but which never could 
have redressed it effectually, was to vitiate and taint 
the coronation of Charles VII as the work of a witch. 20 
That policy, and not malice (as M. Michelet is so 
happy to believe), was the moving principle in the 
subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless they un- 
hinged the force of the first coronation in the popular 
mind by associating it with power given from hell, 25 
they felt that the scepter of the invader was broken. 
But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought 
wonders so great for France, was she not elated? 
Did she not lose, as men so often have lost, all 
sobriety of mind when standing upon the pinnacle 30 
of success so giddy? Let her enemies declare. 



48 JOAN OF ARC 

During the progress of her movement, and in the 
center of ferocious struggles, she had manifested the 
temper of her feelings by the pity which she had 
everywhere expressed for the suffering enemy. 
5 She forwarded to the English leaders a touching 
invitation to unite with the French, as brothers, in a 
common crusade against infidels — thus opening the 
road for a soldierly retreat. She interposed to pro- 
tect the captive or the wounded ; she mourned over 

10 the excesses of her countrymen ; she threw herself 
off her horse to kneel by the dying English soldier 
and to comfort him with such ministrations, physical 
or spiritual, as his situation allowed. "Nolebat," 
says the evidence, "uti ense suo, aut quemquam 

15 interficere." She sheltered the English that in- 
voked her aid in her own quarters. She wept as she 
beheld, stretched on the field of battle, so many 
brave enemies that had died without confession. 
And, as regarded herself, her elation expressed it- 

20 self thus : on the day when she had finished her work, 
she wept; for she knew that, when her triumphal 
task was done, her end must be approaching. Her 
aspirations pointed only to a place which seemed 
to her more than usually full of natural piety, as one 

25 in which it would give her pleasure to die. And she 
uttered, between smiles and tears, as a wish that in- 
expressibly fascinated her heart, and yet was half 
fantastic, a broken prayer that God would return 
her to the solitudes from which he had drawn her, 

30 and suffer her to become a shepherdess once more. 
It was a natural prayer, because nature has laid a 



JOAN OF ARC 49 

necessity upon every human heart to seek for rest 
and to shrink from torment. Yet, again, it was a 
half-fantastic prayer, because, from childhood up- 
ward, visions that she had no power to mistrust; 
and the voices which sounded in her ear forever, 5 
had long since persuaded her mind that for her no 
such prayer could be granted. Too well she felt 
that her mission must be worked out to the end, 
and that the end was now at hand. All went wrong 
from this time. She herself had created the funds 10 
out of which the French restoration should grow; 
but she was not suffered to witness their develop- 
ment or their prosperous application. More than 
one military plan was entered upon which she did 
not approve. But she still continued to expose her 15 
person as before. Severe wounds had not taught 
her caution. And at length, in a sortie from Com- 
piegne (whether through treacherous collusion on the 
part of her own friends is doubtful to this day), 
she was made prisoner by the Burgundians, and 20 
finally surrendered to the English. 

Now came her trial. This trial, moving of course 
under English influence, was conducted in chief by 
the Bishop of Beauvais. He was a Frenchman, sold 
to English interests, and hoping, by favor of the 25 
English leaders, to reach the highest preferment. 
" Bishop that art, Archbishop that shalt be, Cardinal 
that mayest be," were the words that sounded con- 
tinually in his ear; and doubtless a whisper of vis- 
ions still higher, of a triple crown, and feet upon 30 
the necks of kings, sometimes stole into his heart. 



50 JOAN OF ARC 

M. Michelet is anxious to keep us in mind that this 
bishop was but an agent of the English. True. But 
it does not better the case for his countryman that, 
being an accomplice in the crime, making himself 

5 the leader in the persecution against the helpless girl, 
he was willing to be all this in the spirit, and with the 
conscious vileness of a cat's-paw. Never from the 
foundations of the earth was there such a trial as this, 
if it were laid open in all its beauty of defense and 

1 oall its hellishness of attack. Oh, child of France! 
shepherdess, peasant girl ! trodden under foot by 
all around thee, how I honor thy flashing intellect, 
quick as God's lightning, and true as God's lightning 
to its mark, that ran before France and laggard 

Jo Europe by many a century, confounding the malice 
of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of 
falsehood ! Is it not scandalous, is it not humiliat- 
ing to civilization, that, even at this day, France 
exhibits the horrid spectacle of judges examining 

20 the prisoner against himself; seducing him, by fraud, 
into treacherous conclusions against his own head; 
using the terrors of their power for extorting confes- 
sions from the frailty of hope; nay (which is worse), 
using the blandishments of condescension and snaky 

25 kindness for thawing into compliances of gratitude 
those whom they had failed to freeze into terror? 
Wicked judges ! barbarian jurisprudence i — that, 
sitting in your own conceit on the summits of social 
wisdom, have yet failed to learn the first principles 

30 of criminal justice — sit ye humbly and with docility 
at the feet of this girl from Domremy, that tore your 



JOAN OF ARC 51 

webs of cruelty into shreds and dust. " Would you 
examine me as a witness against myself?" was the 
question by which many times she defied their arts. 
Continually she showed that their interrogations 
were irrelevant to any business before the court, c 
or that entered into the ridiculous charges against 
her. General questions were proposed to her on 
points of casuistical divinity; two-edged ques- 
tions, which not one of themselves could have an- 
swered, without, on the one side, landing himself 10 
in heresy (as then interpreted), or, on the other, 
in some presumptuous expression of self-esteem. 
Next came a wretched Dominican, that pressed her 
with an objection, which, if applied to the Bible, 
would tax every one of its miracles with unsoundness. 15 
The monk had the excuse of never having read the 
Bible. M. Michelet has no such excuse; and it 
makes one blush for him, as a philosopher, to find 
him describing such an argument as " weighty," 
whereas it is but a varied expression of rude Mahome- 20 
tan metaphysics. Her answer to this, if there were 
room to place the whole in a clear light, was as shat- 
tering as it was rapid. Another thought to entrap 
her by asking what language the angelic visitors 
of her solitude had talked — as though heavenly 2." 
counsels could want polyglot interpreters for every 
word, or that God needed language at all in whis- 
pering thoughts to a human heart. Then came a 
worse devil, who asked her whether the Archangel 
Michael had appeared naked. Not comprehending 30 
the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty sug- 



52 JOAN OF ARC 

gested to her simplicity that it might be the costli- 
ness of suitable robes which caused the demur, asked 
them if they fancied God, who clothed the flowers of 
the valleys, unable to find raiment for his servants. 
5 The answer of Joanna moves a smile of tenderness, 
but the disappointment of her judges makes one 
laugh exultingly. Others succeeded by troops, 
who upbraided her with leaving her father; as if 
that greater Father, whom she believed herself 

10 to have been serving, did not retain the power of 
dispensing with his own rules, or had not said that 
for a less cause than martyrdom man and woman 
should leave both father and mother. 

On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long 

15 proceeding, the poor girl fell so ill as to cause a belief 
that she had been poisoned. It was not poison. 
Nobody had any interest in hastening a death so 
certain. M. Michelet, whose sympathies with all 
feelings are so quick that one would gladly see them 

20 always as justly directed, reads the case most truly. 
Joanna had a twofold malady. She was visited by 
a paroxysm of the complaint called homesickness. 
The cruel nature of her imprisonment, and its length, 
could not but point her solitary thoughts, in darkness 

25 and in chains (for chained she was), to Domremy. 
And the season, which was the most heavenly 
period of the spring, added stings to this yearning. 
That was one of her maladies — nostalgia, as medi- 
cine calls it; the other was weariness and exhaus- 

30 tion from daily combats with malice. She saw that 
everybody hated her and thirsted for her blood; 



JOAN OF ARC 53 

nay, ma,ny kind-hearted creatures that would have 
pitied her profoundly, as regarded all political 
charges, had their natural feelings warped by the 
belief that she had dealings with fiendish powers. 
She knew she was to die ; that was not the misery ! 5 
the misery was that this consummation could not be 
reached without so much intermediate strife, as if 
she were contending for some chance (where chance 
was none) of happiness, or wore dreaming for a 
moment of escaping the inevitable. Why, then, didio 
she contend? Knowing that she would reap noth- 
ing from answering her persecutors, why did she not 
retire by silence from the superfluous contest? It 
was because her quick and eager loyalty to truth 
would not suffer her to see it darkened by frauds 15 
which she could expose, but others, even of candid 
listeners, perhaps, could not; it was through that 
imperishable grandeur of soul which taught her to 
submit meekly and without a struggle to her punish- 
ment, but taught her not to submit — no, not for a 20 
moment — to calumny as to facts, or to misconstruc- 
tion as to motives. Besides, there were secretaries 
all around the court taking down her words. That 
was meant for no good to her. But the end does not 
always correspond to the meaning. And Joanna 25 
might say to herself, " These words that will be used 
against me to-morrow and the next day, perhaps, 
in some nobler generation, may rise again for justi- 
fication." Yes, Joanna, they are rising even now 
in Paris, and for more than justification ! 30 

Woman, sister, there are some things which you do 



54 JOAN OF ARC 

not execute as well as your brother, man; no, nor 
ever will. Pardon me if I doubt whether you will 
ever produce a great poet from your choirs, or a 
Mozart, or a Phidias, or a Michael Angelo, or a great 
5 philosopher, or a great scholar. By which last is 
meant — not one who depends simply on an infinite 
memory, but also on an infinite and electrical 
power of combination; bringing together from the 
four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what 

10 else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity 
of breathing life. If you can create yourselves into 
any of these great creators, why have you not? 

Yet, sister woman, though 1 cannot consent to 
find a Mo/art or a Michael Angelo in your Bex, 

15 cheerfully, and with the love that burns in depths 
of admiration, I acknowledge that you can do one 
thing as well as the best of us men — a greater 
thing than even Milton is known to have done, or 
Michael Angelo; you can (lie grandly, and asgod- 

aodesses would die. were goddesses mortal. If any 
distant worlds (which may be the case) are so far 
ahead of us Tellurians in optical resources as to 
see distinctly through their telescopes all that we 
do on earth, what is the grandest sighl to which we 

25 ever treat them? St. Peter's at Rome, do you 
fancy, on Easter Sunday, or Luxor, or perhaps the 
Himalayas? Oh, no! my friend; suggest some- 
thing better; these are baubles to them; they see 
in other worlds, in their own, far better toys of the 

30 same kind. These, take my word for it, are nothing. 
Do you give it up ? The finest thing, then, we have 



JOAN OF ARC 55 

to show them is a scaffold on tho morning of execu- 
tion. I assure you there is a strong muster in those 
far telescopic worlds, on any such morning, of 
those who happen to find themselves occupying 
the right hemisphere for a peep at us. How, then, 5 
if it be announced in some such telescopic world by 
those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses al 
our newspapers, whose language they have long 
since deciphered, that the poor victim in the morn- 
ing's sacrifice is a woman? How, if it be published 10 
in that distant world that the sufferer wears upon 
her head in the eyes of many, the garlands of mar- 
tyrdom? How, if it should be some Marie Antoi- 
nette, the widowed queen, coming forward on the 
scaffold, and presenting to the morning air her 15 
head, turned gray by sorrow — (hum liter of Caesars 
kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one 
that worships death? How, if it were the noble 
Charlotte Corday, that in the bloom of youth, 
that with the loveliest of persons, that with homage 20 
waiting upon her smiles wherever she turned her 
face to scatter them — homage that followed those 
smiles as surely as the carols of birds, after showers 
in spring, follow the reappearing sun and the racing 
of sunbeams over the hills — yet thought all these 25 
things cheaper than the dust upon her sandals, in 
comparison of deliverance from hell for her dear 
suffering France ! Ah ! these were spectacles indeed 
for those sympathizing people in distant worlds; 
and some, perhaps, would suffer a sort of martyr- 30 
dom themselves, because they could not testify 



56 JOAN OF ARC 

their wrath, could not bear witness to the strength 
of love and to the fury of hatred that burned within 
them at such scenes, could not gather into golden 
urns some of that glorious dust which rested in the 
5 catacombs of earth. 

On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, 
being then about nineteen years of age, the Maid 
of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was con- 
ducted before mid-day, guarded by eight hundred 

10 spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, con- 
structed of wooden billets supported by occasional 
walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow 
spaces in every direction for the creation of air 
currents. The pile "struck terror," says M. Miche- 

15 let, "by its height"; and, as usual, the English 
purpose in this is viewed as one of pure malignity. 
But there are two ways of explaining all that. It is 
probable that the purpose was merciful. On the 
circumstances of the execution I shall not linger. 

20 Yet, to mark the almost fatal felicity of M. Michelet 
in finding out whatever may injure the English 
name, at a moment when every reader will be inter- 
ested in Joanna's personal appearance, it is really 
edifying to notice the ingenuity by which he draws 

2.") into light from a dark corner a very unjust account 
of it, and neglects, though lying upon the highroad, 
a very pleasing one. Both are from English pens. 
Grafton, a chronicler, but little read, being a stiff- 
necked John Bull, thought fit to say that no wonder 

30 Joanna should be a virgin, since her "foule face" 
was a satisfactory solution of that particular merit. 



JOAN OF ARC 57 

Holinshead, on the other hand, a chronicler some- 
what later, every way more important, and at one 
time universally read, has given a very pleasing 
testimony to the interesting character of Joanna's 
person and engaging manners. Neither of theses 
men lived till the following century, so that personally 
this evidence is none at all. Grafton sullenly and 
carelessly believed as he wished to believe; Holins- 
head took pains to inquire, and reports undoubtedly 
the general impression of France. But I cite theio 
case as illustrating M. Michelet's candor. 1 

1 Amongst the many ebullitions of M. Michelet's fury against us 
poor English are four which will be likely to amuse the reader ; 
and they are the more conspicuous in collision with the justice 
which he sometimes does us, and the very indignant admiration 
which, under some aspects, he grants to us. 

1. Our English literature he admires with some gnashing of 
teeth. He pronounces it "fine and somber," but, I lament to add, 
"skeptical, Judaic, Satanic — in a word, antichristian." That 
Lord Byron should figure as a member of this diabolical corpora- 
tion will not surprise men. It will surprise them tc hear that 
Milton is one of its Satanic leaders. Many are the generous and 
eloquent Frenchmen, besides Chateaubriand, who have, in the 
course of the last thirty years, nobly suspended their own burning 
nationality, in order to render a more rapturous homage at the feet 
of Milton ; and some of them have raised Milton almost to a level 
with angelic natures. Not one of them has thought of looking for 
him below the earth. As to Shakspere, M. Michelet detects in him 
a most extraordinary mare's nest. It is this: he does "not recol- 
lect to have seen the name of God " in any part of his works. On 
reading such words, it is natural to rub one's eyes, and suspect 
that all one has ever seen in this world may have been a pure 
ocular delusion. In particular, I begin myself to suspect that the 
word u la gloire" never occurs in any Parisian journal. "The 
great English nation," says M. Michelet, "has one immense pro- 
found vice" — to wit, "pride." Why, really, that may be true ; 
but we have a neighbor not absolutely clear of an " immense pro- 
found vice," as like ours in color and shape as cherry to cherry. 
In short, M. Michelet thinks us, by fits and starts, admirable — 



58 JOAN OF ARC 

The circumstantial incidents of the execution, 
unless with more space than I can now command, 
I should be unwilling to relate. I should fear to 
injure, by imperfect report, a martyrdom which 
5 to myself appears so unspeakably grand. Yet, 
for a purpose, pointing not at Joanna, but at M. 
Michelet — viz., to convince him that an English- 
only that we are detestable ; and he would adore some of our 
authors, were it not that so intensely he could have wished to kick 
them. 

2. M. Michelet thinks to lodge an arrow in our sides by a very 
odd remark upon Thomas a Kempis : which is, that a man of any 

conceivable European bl I -a ^inlander, suppose, or a Zantiote 

— might have written Tom ; only not an Englishman. Whether 
an Englishman could have forged Tom must remain a matter oi 
doubt, unless the thing had been tried long ago. Thai problem 
was intercepted forever by Tom's perverseness in choosing to 

manufacture himself. Vet, since nobody is better aware than M. 

Michelet that this very point of Kempis having manufactured 

Kempis is furiously ami hopelessly litigated, three or four nations 
claiming to have forged his work for him. the shocking old doubt 
will raise its snaky head once more — whet her this forger, who 
rests in so much darkness, might not. after all, be of English blood. 
Tom, it may he feared, is known to modern English literature 
chiefly by an irreverenl mention of his name in a line of Peter 
Pindar's (Dr. Wolcot) fifty years back, where he is described as 

" Kempis Tom, 
Who clearly shows the way to Kingdom Come." 

Few in these days can have read him, unless in the Methodist ver- 
sion of John Wesley. Anions those few. however, happens to be 
myself ; which arose from the accident of having, when a hoy of 
eleven, received a copy of the " De Imitatione Christi " as a bequest 
from a relation who died very young : from which eause, and from 
the external pret t ineSS of the hook — being a Glasgow reprint by 
the celebrated Foulis. and gayly bound — I was induced to look into 
it, and finally read it many times over, partly out of some sym- 
pathy which, even in those days. 1 had with its simplicity and de- 
votional fervor, hut mueh more from the Bavage delight I found 
in laughing at Tom's Latinity. That, I freely grant to M. Michelet 



JOAN OF ARC 59 

man is capable of thinking more highly of La 
Pucelle than even her admiring countrymen — I 
shall, in parting, allude to one or two traits in 
Joanna's demeanor on the scaffold, and to one or 
two in that of the bystanders, which authorize 5 
me in questioning- an opinion of his upon this mar- 
tyr's firmness. The reader ought to be reminded 

is inimitable. Yet, after all, it is not certain whether the original 
was Latin. But, however tlmt may have been, if it is possible that 
M. Michelel *can be accurate in Baying that there are no less than 
sixty French versions (not edition-, observe, bu1 separate versions) 
existing of the"De hnitatione," how prodigious must have heen 
the adaptation <>f the book to the religions heart of the fifteenth 
century I Exceptingthe Bible, but excepting tlmi only in Protes- 
tant lands, no l.ook known to man has had the same distinction. 
It is the most marvelous bibliographical fact on record. 

:;. our English girls, it Beems, are aa faulty in one way as we 
English males in another. None of us men could have written the 
Opera Omnia ot Mr. a Cempis ; aeither could any of our girls have 
assumed male attire like La Pncelle. But why? Because, says 
Michelet, English girls and German think so much of an indecorum. 
Well, thai is a good fault, generally speaking. But M. Michelet 
oughl to have remembered a fan in the ma rtvrologies which justi- 
fies both parties— the French heroine for doing, and the general 
choir of English sirls for not doing. A female saint, specially 
renowned in France, had, for a reason as weighty as Joanna's — 
viz., expressly to shield her modesty among men — worn a male 
military harness. That reason and that example authorized La 
Pucelle ; hut our English girls, as a body, have seldom any such 

* u If V Michelet 6cm bt accurate":— However, on consideration, this 
statement does doI depend on Michelet. The bibliographer Barbier has abso- 
lutely specified sixty in a Beparate dissertation, eoiwanU traductions, among 
those .v.n that have nol escaped the search. The Italian translations are said 
to be thirty. As t<> mere editions, not counting the early MSS. for half a 
century before printing was Introduced, tln.se in Latin amount to 2000, and 
those in French to loOO. Meantime, it is very clear to me that this astonishing 
popularity, so entirely unparalleled in literature, could not have existed except 
in Roman Catholic times, nor subsequently have lingered in any Protestant 
land. It was the denial of Scripture fountains to thirsty lands which made this, 
Blender rill of Scripture truth so passionately welcome, 



60 JOAN OF ARC 

that Joanna D'Arc was subjected to an unusually 
unfair trial of opinion. Any of the elder Christian 
martyrs had not much to fear of personal rancor. 
The martyr was chiefly regarded as the enemy of 
5 Caesar; at times, also, where any knowledge of 

reason, and certainly no such saintly example, to plead. This 
excuses thou. Yet, still, if it is Indispensable to the national 
character that onr young women Bhould now and then trespass over 
the frontier of decorum, it then becomes ■ patriotic duty in me to 
assure M. Michelet that we have such anient females among as, 
and in a long scries; some detected in naval hospitals when too 
sick to remember their disguise; some on fields of battle; multi- 
tudes never detected a1 all ; some only suspected ; and others dis- 
charged without noise by war officers and other absurd people, in 

our navy, both royal and commercial, and generally from deep 

remembrances ol slighted love, women have sometimes served in 
disguise for many years, taking contentedly their daily allowance 
of burgoo, biscuit, or cannon-hulls — anything, in short, digestible 
or indigestible, that it mighl please Providence to send. One 
thing, at least, is to their credit : never any of these poor masks, 
with their deep silent remembrances, have been detected through 
murmuring, or what is nautically understood by "skulking/ 1 Bo, 
for once. If. Michelet has an erratum to enter upon the fly-leaf of 

his hook in presentation copies. 

4. But the lasl of these elm 1 1 it ions is the most lively. We Eng- 
lish, at Orleans, and after Orleans (which is not quite so extraordi- 
nary, if all were told), tied before the Maid of Arc. Yes. Bays M. 
Michelet, you did : deny it, if you can. Deny it, mon chert I don't 
mean to deny it. Running away, in many cases, is a thing so ex- 
cellent that no philosopher would, at times, condescend to adopt 
any other step. All of us nations in Europe, without one exception, 
have shown our philosophy in that way at times. Even people 
li qui ne se rendeni pas" have deigned both to run and to shout, 
"Stinrf quipent!" at odd times of sunset ; though for my part, 
I have no pleasure in recalling unpleasant remembrances to brave 
men ; and yet, really, being so philosophic, they ought not to be 
unpleasant. Bui the amusing feature in M. Michelet's reproach is 
the way in which he improves and varies against us the charge of 
running, as if he were singing a catch. Listen to him : They 
•• thowed their backs," did these English. (Hip, hip, hurrah ! three 
times three !) " Behind good walls they let themselves be taken," 



JOAN OF ARC 61 

the Christian faith and morals existed, with the 
enmity that arises spontaneously in the world 
against the spiritual. But the martyr, though 
disloyal, was not supposed to be therefore anti- 
national; and still less was individually hateful. 5 
What was hated (if anything) belonged to his class, 
not to himself separately. Now, Joanna, if hated 
at all, was hated personally, and in Rouen on na- 
tional grounds. Hence there would be a certainty * 
of calumny arising against her such as would notio 
affect martyrs in general. That being the case, it 
would follow of necessity that some people would 
impute to her a willingness to recant. No inno- 
cence could escape that. Now, had she really testi- 
fied this willingness on the scaffold, it would have is 
argued nothing at all but the weakness of a genial 
nature shrinking from the instant approach of tor- 
ment. And those will often pity that weakness 
mosl who, in their own persons, would yield to 
it least. Meantime, there never was a calumny 20 

(Hip, Up ! nine times nine !) They " ran 08 fast us their leas could 
carry them," (Hurrah I twenty-seven times twenty-seven !) They 
•' ran before a girl '»; they did. (Hurrah ! eighty-one times eighty- 
out-:) This reminds one of criminal indictments on the old model 
in English courts, where (for fear the prisoner should escape) the 
crown lawyer varied the charge perhaps through forty counts. 
The law laid its guns so as to rake the accused at every possible 
angle. While the indictment was reading, he seemed a monster of 
crime in his own eyes ; and yet, after all, the poor fellow had, but 
committed one offence, and not always that. N.B. — Not having 
the French original at hand, I make my quotations from a friend's 
copy of Mr. Walter Kelly's translation ; which seems to me faith- 
ful, spirited, and idiomatically English — liable, in fact, only to the 
single reproach of occasional provincialisms. 



62 JOAN OF ARC 

uttered that drew less support from the recorded 
circumstances. It rests upon no positive testimony, 
and it has a weight of contradicting testimony to 
stem. And yet, strange to say. M. Michelet, who 
5 at times seems to admire the Maid of Arc as much 
as I do, is the one sole writer among her friends 
who lends some countenance to this odious slander. 
His words are that, if she did not utter this word 
recant with her lips, she uttered it in her heart. 

in" Whether she said the word is uncertain; but I 
affirm that she thought it." 

Now, I affirm that she did not ; not in any sense 
of the word "thought" applicable to the case. Here 
is France calumniating La Pucelle; here is England 

15 defending her. M. Michelet can only mean that, 
on a priori principles, every woman must be pre- 
sumed liable to such a weakness; that Joanna was 
a woman; ergo, that she was liable to such a weak- 
ness. That is, he only supposes her to have ut tered 

•jot he word by an argument which presumes it impos- 
sible for anybody 1<> have done otherwise. I, on 
the contrary, throw the onus of the argument not 
on presumable tendencies of nature, but on the 
known facts of that morning's execution, as re- 

25 corded by multitudes. What else, I demand, than 
mere weight of metal, absolute nobility of deport- 
ment, broke the vast line of battle then arrayed 
against her? What else but her meek, saintly 
demeanor won, from the enemies that till now had 

:\o believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration ? 
"Ten thousand men," says M. Michelet himself — 



JOAN OF ARC 63 

"ten thousand men wept"; and of these ten thou- 
sand the majority were political enemies knitted 
together by cords of superstition. What else was 
it but her constancy, united with her angelic gentle- 
ness, that drove the fanatic English soldier — who 5 
had sworn to throw a fagot on her scaffold as his 
tribute of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his 
vow — suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, 
saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising 
upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had LO 
stood? What else drove the executioner to kneel at 
every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy? 
And, if all this were insufficient . t hen I cite the clos- 
ing act of her lite as valid on her behalf, were all other 
testimonies against her. The executioner had been IB 
directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. 
The fiery smoke rose upward in billowing volumes. 
A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her 
side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not 
the danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even -jo 
then, when the last enemy was racing up the fiery 
stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this 
noblest of girls think only for him, the one friend 
that would not forsake her, and not for herself; bid- 
ding him with her last breath to care for his own 25 
preservation, but to leave her to God. That girl, 
whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expres- 
sion of self-oblivion, did not utter the word recant 
either with her lips or in her heart. No; she did not, 
though one should rise from the dead to swear it. 30 



64 JOAN OF ARC 

Bishop of Beauvais ! thy victim died in fire upon 
a scaffold — thou upon a down bed. But, for the 
departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. 
At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are 

."•opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, 
oftentimes the tortured and the torturer have the 
same truce from carnal torment; both sink to- 
gether into sleep; together both sometimes kindle 
into dreams. When the mortal mists were gather- 

loing fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl — 
when the pavilions of life were closing up their 
shadowy curtains about you — let us try, through 
the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features 
of your separate visions. 

15 The shepherd girl that had delivered France — 
she, from her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the 
stake, she, from her duel with fire, as she entered 
her last dream — saw Domremy, saw the fountain 
of Domremy, saw the pomp of the forests in which 

20 her childhood had wandered. That Easter festival 
which man had denied to her languishing heart — 
that resurrection of springtime, which the dark- 
ness of dungeons had intercepted from ho\ hunger- 
ing after the glorious liberty of forests — were by 

25 God given back into her hands as jewels that had 
been stolen from her by robbers. With those, 
perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can stretch into 
ages), was given back to her by God the bliss of 
childhood. By special privilege for her might be 

30 created, in this farewell dream, a second childhood, 
innocent as the first; but not, like that, sad with the 



JOAN OF ARC 65 

gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. This mission 
had now been fulfilled. The storm was weathered; 
the skirts even of that mighty storm were drawing 
off. The blood that she was to reckon for had been 
exacted; the tears that she was to shed in secret 5 
had been paid to the last. The hatred to herself 
in all eyes had been faced steadily, had been suffered, 
had been survived. And in her last fight upon the 
scaffold she had triumphed gloriously; victori- 
ously she had tasted the stings of death. For all, 10 
except this comfort from her farewell dream, she 
had died — died amid the tears of ten thousand 
enemies — died amid the drums and trumpets of 
armies — died amid peals redoubling upon peals, 
volleys upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of 15 
martyrs. 

Bishop of Beauvais! because the guilt-burdened 
man is in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most 
frightful of his crimes, and because upon that fluc- 
tuating mirror — rising (like the mocking mirrors20 
of mirage in Arabian deserts) from the fens of death 
— most of all are reflected the sweet countenances 
which the man has laid in ruins ; therefore I know, 
bishop, that you also, entering your final dream, 
saw Domremy. That fountain, of which the 25 
witnesses spoke so much, showed itself to your 
eyes in pure morning dews; but neither dews, nor 
the holy dawn, could cleanse away the bright spots 
of innocent blood upon its surface. By the foun- 
tain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid her 30 
face. But, as you draw near, the woman raises 



66 JOAN OF ABC 

her wasted features. Would Domremy know them 
again for the features of her child? Ah, but you 
know them, bishop, well ! Oh, mercy ! what a 
groan was that which the servants, waiting outside 
5 the bishop's dream at his bedside, heard from his 
laboring heart, as at this moment he turned away 
from the fountain and the woman, seeking rest in 
the forests afar off. Yet not so to escape the woman, 
whom once again he must behold before he dies. In 

10 the forests to which he prays for pity, will he fino 
a respite? What a tumult, what a gathering of 
feet is there ! In glades where only wild deer should 
run armies and nations are assembling; towering 
in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms that belong 

15 to departed hours. There is the great English 
Prince, Regent of France. There is my Lord oi 
Winchester, the princely cardinal, that died and 
made no sign. There is the bishop of Beau va is, 
clinging to the shelter of the thickets. What build- 

20ing is that which hands so rapid are raising? Is it 
a martyr's scaffold? Will they burn the child of 
Domremy a second time ? No ; it is a tribunal that 
rises to the clouds; and two nations stand around 
it, waiting for a trial. Shall my Lord of Beauvais 

25 sit again upon the judgment-seat, and again number 
the hours for the innocent? Ah, no! he is the 
prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting: the 
mighty audience is gathered, the Court is hurrying 
to their seats, the witnesses are arrayejl, the trum- 

30 pets are sounding, the judge is taking his place. Oh, 
but this is sudden! My lord, have you no counsel? 



JOAN OF ARC 67 

" Counsel I have none ; in heaven above, or on earth 
beneath, counselor there is none now that would 
take a brief from me: all are silent." Is it indeed, 
come to this? Alas! the time is short, the tumult 
is wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity; 5 
but yet I will search in it for somebody to take your 
brief; I know of somebody that will be your counsel. 
Who is this that cometh from Domremy? Who 
is she in bloody coronation robes from Rheims? 
Who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from 10 
walking the furnaces of Rouen? This is she, the 
shepherd girl, counselor that had none for herself, 
whom I choose, bishop, for yours. She it is, I 
engage, that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, 
bishop, that would plead for you; yes, bishop, she 15 
— when heaven and earth are silent. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

Section I — The Glory of Motion 

Some twenty or more years before I matriculated 
at Oxford, Mr. Palmer, at that time M.P. for Bath, 
had accomplished two things, very hard to do on 
our little planet, the Earth, however cheap they 

5 may be held by eccentric people m comets: he had 
invented mail coaches, and he had married the 
daughter of a duke. Be was. therefore, jusl twice 
as great a man as Galileo, who did certainly invent 
(or, which is the same thing, 1 discover) the satellites 

10 of Jupiter, those very next things extant to mail 
coaches in the two capital pretensions of speed and 
keeping time, hut, on the other hand, who did not 
marry the daughter of a duke. 

These mail coaches, as organized by Mr. Palmer, 

I5are entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself, 
having had so large a share in developing the an- 
archies of my subsequent dreams: an agency 
which they accomplished, 1st, through velocity at 
that time unprecedented — for they first revealed 

20 the glory of motion; 2dly, through grand effects 

i " The tame thing":-' Thus, in the calendar of the Church 
Festivals, the discovery of the true cross (by Helen, the mother of 
Constantine) is recorded (and, one might think, with the express 
consciousness of sarcasm) as the Ttun ntton of the Cross. 

68 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 69 

for the eye between lamplight and the darkness 
upon solitary roads; 3dly, through animal beauty 
and power so often displayed in the class of horses 
selected for this mail service; 4thly, through the 
conscious presence of a central intellect, that, in 5 
the midst of vast distances 1 — of storms, of dark- 
ness, of danger — overruled all obstacles into one 
steady cooperation to a national result. For my 
own feeling, this post-office service spoke as by some 
mighty orchestra, where a thousand instruments, 10 
all disregarding each other, and so far in danger of 
discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme 
baton of some great leader, terminate in a perfec- 
tion of harmony like that of heart, brain, and lungs 
in a healthy animal organization. But, finally, 15 
that particular element in this whole combination 
which most impressed myself, and through which 
it is that to this hour Mr. Palmer's mail-coach system 
tyrannizes over my dreams by terror and terrific 
beauty, lay in the awful political mission which at 20 
that time it fulfilled. The mail coach it was that 
distributed over the face of the land, like the opening 
of apocalyptic vials, the heart-shaking news of 
Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo. 
These were the harvests that, in the grandeur of 25 
their reaping, redeemed the tears and blood in 
which they had been sown. Neither was the mean- 

1 " Vast distances" : — One case was familiar to mail-coach trav- 
elers where two mails in opposite directions, north and south, 
starting at the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, 
met almost constantly at a particular bridge which bisected the total 
distance. 



70 THE ENGLISH MAIL LOACH 

est peasant so much below the grandeur and the 
sorrow of the times as to confound battles such 
as these, which wen- gradually molding; the des- 
tinies of Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of 
5 ordinary warfare, so often no more than gladiatorial 
trials of national prowess. The victories of England 
in this stupendous contest rose of themselves as 
natural Te Deums to heaven; and it was felt by 
the thoughtful that such victories, at such a crisis 

10 of general prostration, were not more beneficial to 
ourselves than finally to France, our enemy, and 
to the nations of all western or central Europe, 
through whose pusillanimity it was that the French 
domination had prospered. 

15 The mail coach, as the national organ for publish- 
ing these mighty events, thus diffusively influen- 
tial, became itself a spiritualized and glorified object 
to an impassioned heart; and naturally, in the 
Oxford of that day. nil hearts were impassioned, 

20as being all (or nearly all) in early manhood. In 
most universities there is one single college; in 
Oxford there were f i \e-and-t wen t y . all of which 
were peopled by young men, the Mite of their own 
generation; not boys, but men: none under eight- 

26een. In some of these many colleges the custom 
permitted the student to keep what are called "short 
terms"; that is, the four terms of Michaelmas, 
Lent. Easter, and Act, were kept by a residence'. 
in the aggregate, of ninety-one days, or thirteen 

30 weeks. Under this interrupted residence, it was 
possible that a student might have a reason for 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 71 

going down to his home four times in the year. 
This made eight journeys to and fro. But, as these 
homes lay dispersed through all the shires of the 
island, and most of us disdained all coaches except 

Majesty's mail, no city out of London could pre- 5 
tend to so extensive a connection with Mr. Palmer's 
establishment as Oxford. Three mails, at the 
least, 1 remember as passing every day through 
Oxford, and benefiting by my personal patronage 
— viz., the Worcester, the Gloucester, and the 10 
Holyhead mail. Naturally, therefore, it became 
a point of some interest with us, whose journeys 
revolved every six weeks on an average, to look a 
little into the executive details of the system. 
With some of these Mr. Palmer had no concern; 15 
they rested upon by-laws enacted by posting-houses 
for their own benefit, and upon other by-laws, 
equally stern, enacted by the inside passengers 
for the illustration of their own haughty exclu- 
siveness. These last were of a nature to rouse 20 
our scorn; from which the transition was not very 
long to systematic mutiny. Up to this time, say 
L804, or 1805 (the year of Trafalgar), it had been 
the fixed assumption of the four inside people (as 
an old tradition of all public carriages derived from 25 
the reign of Charles II) that they, the illustrious 
quaternion, constituted a porcelain variety of the 
human race, whose dignity would have been com- 
promised by exchanging one word of civility with 
the three miserable delf-ware outsides. Even to 30 
have kicked an outsider might have been held to 



72 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

attaint the foot concerned in that operation, so 
that, perhaps, it would have required an act of 
Parliament to restore its purity of blood. What 
words, then, could express the horror, and the 

5 sense of treason, in that case, which had happened, 
where all three outsides (the trinity of Pariahs) 
made a vain attempt t<> sit down at the same break- 
fast-table or dinner-table with the consecrated four? 
I myself witnessed such an attempt ; ami on that 

10 occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavored 
to soothe his three holy associates, by suggesting 
that, if the outsiders were indicted for this criminal 
attempt at the next assizes, the court would regard 
it as a case of lunacy or delirium tremens rather 

15 than of treason. England owes much of her L r r:in- 
deur to the depth of the aristocratic element in her 
social composition, when pulling against her strong 
democracy. I am not the man to laugh at it. 
Hut sometimes, undoubtedly, it expressed itself 

20 in comic shapes. The course taken with the in- 
fatuated outsiders, in the particular attempt which 
I have noticed, was that the waiter, beckoning 
them away from the privileged 8aUe-d^manger t 
Bang out. "This way. my good men." and then 

25 enticed these good men away to the kitchen. But 
that plan had not always answered. Sometimes. 
though rarely, cases occurred where the intruders, 
being stronger than usual, or more vicious than 
usual, resolutely refused to budge, and bo far carried 

30 their point as to have a separate table arranged for 
themselves in a corner of the general room. Yet, 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 73 

if an Indian screen could be found ample enough 
to plant them out from the very eyes of the high 
table, or dais, it then became possible to assume 
as a fiction of law that the three delf fellows, after 
all, were not present. They could be ignored by 5 
the porcelain men, under the maxim that objects 
not appearing and objects not existing are governed 
by the same logical construction. 

Such being, at that time, the usage of mail- 
coaches, what was to be done by us of young 10 
Oxford? We, the most aristocratic of people, who 
were addicted to the practice of looking down 
superciliously even upon the Lnsides themselves as 
often very questionable characters — were we, 
by voluntarily going outside, to court indignities ? 15 
It our dress and bearing sheltered us generallv 
from the suspicion of being "raff" (the name at 
that period f«»r " snobs " x ). we really were such con- 
structively by the place we assumed. If we did not 
submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we entered20 
at least the skirts of its penumbra. And the anal- 
ogy of theaters was valid against us, — where no 
man can complain of the annoyances incident to 
the pit or gallery, having his instant remedy in 
paying the higher price of the boxes. But the 25 
soundness of this analogy we disputed. In the 
case of the theater, it cannot be pretended that 

i " Snob*:' and its antithesis, " nobs," arose among the internal 
factions of shoemakers perhaps ten years later. Possibly enough, 
the terms may have existed much earlier; but they were then first 
made known, picturesquely and effectively, by a trial at some 
assizes which happened to fix the public attention. 



74 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

the inferior situation- have any separate attractions, 
unless the pit may be -apposed to have an advan- 
tage for the purposes of the critic or the dramatic 
reporter. But the critic or reporter is a rarity. 
5 For most people, the sole benefit is in the price. 
Now, on the contrary, the outside of the mail had its 
own incommunicable advantages. These we could 
not forego. The higher price we would willingly 
have paid, but not the price connected with the 

10 condition of riding inside; which condition we pro- 
nounced insufferable. The air, the freedom of 
prospect, the proximity to the horses, the elevation 
of seat: these were what we required; hut. above 
all, the certain anticipation of purchasing occasional 

15 opportunities of driving. 

Such was the difficulty which pressed us; and 
under the coercion of this difficulty we instituted 
a searching inquiry into the true quality and valua- 
tion of the different apartments about the mail. 

20 We conducted this inquiry on metaphysical prin- 
ciples; and it was ascertained satisfactorily that 
the roof of the coach, which by some weak men had 
been called the attics, and by some the garrets, 
was in reality the drawing-room; in which draw- 

25ing-room the box was the chief ottoman or 
sofa; whilst it appeared that the inside, which had 
been traditionally regarded as the only room tenant- 
able by gentlemen, was. in fact, the coal cellar in 
disguise. 

-so Great wits jump. The very same idea had not 
long before struck the celestial intellect of China. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 75 

Amongst the presents carried out by our first em- 
bassy to that country was a state coach. It had 
been specially selected as a personal gift by George 
III; but the exact mode of using it was an intense 
mystery to Pekin. The ambassador, indeed (Lord 5 
.Macartney), had made some imperfect explanations 
upon this point; but, as His Excellency commu- 
nicated these in a diplomatic whisper at the very 
moment of his departure, the celestial intellect was 
very feebly illuminated, and it became necessary 10 
to call a cabinet council on the grand state question, 
"Where was the Emperor to sit?" The hammer- 
cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous; and, 
partly on that consideration, but partly also because 
the box offered the most elevated seat, was nearest 15 
to the moon, and undeniably went foremost, it 
was resolved by acclamation that the box was the 
imperial throne, and, for the scoundrel who drove 
— he might sit where he could find a perch. The 
horses, therefore, being harnessed, solemnly his 20 
imperial majesty ascended his new English throne 
under a flourish of trumpets, having the first lord 
of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief 
jester on his left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle; 
and in the whole flowery people, constructively 25 
present by representation, there was but one dis- 
contented person, and that was the coachman. 
This mutinous individual audaciously shouted, 
" Where am / to sit?" But the privy council, 
incensed by his disloyalty, unanimously opened the 30 
door, and kicked him into the inside. He had all 



76 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

the inside places to himself; but such is the rapacity 
of ambition that he was still dissatisfied. "I say," 
he cried out in an extempore petition addressed to 
the Emperor through the window — "I say, how 

5am I to catch hold of the reins?" — 'Anyhow." 
was the imperial answer; "don't trouble me, man, 
in my glory. How catch t he reins ? Why. through 
the windows, through the keyholes — anyhow." 
Finally this contumacious coachman lengthened 

10 the checkstrings into a sort of jury rein- communi- 
cating with the horses; with these he drove as 
Bteadily as Pekin had any right to expect. The 
Emperor returned after the briefest of circuits; 
he descended in great pomp from his throne, with 

15 the severest resolution never to remount it. A pub- 
lic thanksgiving was ordered for his majesty's 
happy escape from the disease of a broken neck; 

and the State coach was dedicated thenceforward 

as a votive offering to the god Fo Fo — whom the 
20 learned more accurately called Fi Fi. 

A revolution of this same Chinese character did 

young Oxford of that era effect in the constitution 
of mail-coach society. It was a perfect French 
Revolution; and we had good reason to say. <;<i int. 

25 In fact, it soon became /"" popular. The "public" 
— a well-known character, particularly disagree- 
able, though slightly respectable, and notorious 
for affecting the chief seats in synagogues — had 
at first loudly opposed this revolution; but, when 

."the opposition showed itself to be ineffectual, our 
disagreeable friend went into it with headlong zeal. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 77 

At first it was a sort of race between us ; and, as 
the public is usually from thirty to fifty years old, 
naturally we of young Oxford, that averaged about 
twenty, had the advantage. Then the public took 
to bribing, giving fees to horsekeepers, etc., who 5 
hired out their persons as warming pans on the 
box seat. That, you know, was shocking to all 
moral sensibilities. Come to bribery, said we, and 
there is an end to all morality, — Aristotle's, Xeno's, 
Cicero's, or anybody's. And, besides, of what use 10 
was it? For we bribed also. And. as our bribes, 
t<> those of the public, were as five shillings to six- 
pence, here again young Oxford had the advantage. 

Bui the contest was ruinous to the principles of 
the Btables connected with the mails. This whole is 
corporation was constantly bribed, rebribed, and 
often BUr-rebribed : a mail-coach yard was like the 
hustings in a contested election; and a horsekeeper, 
OStler, or helper, was held by the philosophical at 
that time to be the most corrupt character in the 20 
nation. 

There was an impression upon the public mind, 
natural enough from the continually augmenting 
velocity of the mail, but quite erroneous, that an 
outside seat on this class of carriages was a post of 25 
danger. On the contrary, I maintained that, if a 
man had become nervous from some gypsy predic- 
tion in his childhood, allocating to a particular 
moon now approaching some unknown danger, 
and he should inquire earnestly, " Whither can 1 30 
fly for shelter? Is a prison the safest retreat? or 



78 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

a lunatic hospital? or the British Museum?" I 
should have replied, "Oh no; I'll tell you what to 
do. Take lodgings for the next forty days on the 
box of his Majesty's mail. Nobody can touch you 
5 there. If it is by bills at ninety days after date 
that you are made unhappy — if noters and pro- 
testers are the sort of wretches whose astrological 
shadows darken the house of life — then note you 
what I vehemently protest: viz., that, no matter 

10 though the sheriff and under-sheriff in every county 
should be running after you with his posse, touch 
a hair of your head ho cannot whilst you keep house 
and have your legal domicile on the box of the mail. 
It is felony to stop the mail; even the sheriff cannot 

15 do that. And an extra touch of the whip to the 
leaders (no great matter if it grazes the sheriff) at 
any time guarantees your safety." In fact, a 
bedroom in a quiet house seems a safe enough re- 
treat; yet it is liable to its own notorious nuisances 

20— to robbers by night, to rat-, to fire. But the 
mail laughs at these terrors. To robbers, the an- 
swer is packed up and ready for delivery in the 
barrel of the guard's blunderbuss. Rats again ! 
there are none about mail coaches any more than 

25 snakes in Von Troil's Iceland; 1 except, indeed, now 
and then a parliamentary rat, who always hides 
his shame in what I have shown to be the "coal 



lii Von Troll's Iceland " ; — The allusion is to a well-known 
chapter in Von Troil's work, entitled, "Concerning the Snakes of 
Iceland." The entire chapter consists of these six words— " Thert 
are no snakes in Iceland." 



THE EXGLISII MAIL COACH 79 

cellar." And, as to fire, I never knew but one in 
a mail coach; which was in the Exeter mail, and 
caused by an obstinate sailor bound to Devonport. 
Jack, making light of the law and the lawgiver that 
had set their faces against his offense, insisted on 5 
taking up a forbidden scat ' in the rear of the roof, 
from which he could exchange his own yarns with 
those of the guard. No greater offense was then 
known to mail coaches; it was treason, it was Icesa 
majesta8, it was by tendency arson; and the ashes 10 
of Jack's pipe, falling among the straw of the hinder 
boot, containing the mail bags, raised a flame which 
(aided by the wind of our motion) threatened a 
revolution in the republic of letters. Yet even this 
left the sanctity of the box un violated. In digni-15 

1" Forbidden seat": — The very sternest code of rules was 
enforced upon the mail by the Post-office. Throughout England, 
only three ontsidea were allowed, of whom one was to sit on the 
box, and the other two immediately behind the box; none, under 
any pretext, to come near the guard; an indispensable caution; 
since else, under the guise of a passenger, a robber might by any 
one of a thousand advantages — which sometimes arc created, but 
always are favored, by the animation <»f frank social intercourse — 
have disarmed the guard. Beyond the Scottish border, the regula- 
tion was so far relaxed as to allow of four ontsides, but not relaxed 
at all as to the mode of placing them. One, as before, was seated 
on the box, and the other three on the front of the roof, with a 
determinate and ample separation from the little insulated chair of 
the gnard. This relaxation was conceded by way of compensating 
to Scotland her disadvantages in point of population. England, by 
the superior density of her population, might always count upon a 
large fund of profits in the fractional trips of chance passengers 
riding for short distances of two or three stages. In Scotland this 
chance counted for much less. And therefore, to make good the 
deficiency, Scotland was allowed a compensatory profit upon one 
extra passenger. 



80 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

ficd repose, the coachman and myself sat on, resting 
with benign composure upon our knowledge that 
the fire would have burned Its way through four 
inside passengers before it could reach ourselves. 
5 I remarked to the coachman, with a quotation from 
Virgil's "iEneid" really too hackneyed — 

"Jam proximus aidet 
Ucalegon." 

But, recollecting that the VirgiliaD pan ofthecoach- 

10 man's education might have been neglected, I inter- 
preted so far as bo say thai perhaps at that moment 
the flame- were catching hold of our worthy brother 
and inside passenger, Ucalegon. The coachman 

made n«. answer. — which is my own way when a 
is stranger addresses me cither in Syriac or in Coptic; 

but by his faint skeptical smile he seemed to insinu- 
ate that he knew Letter. — for that Ucalegon, as 

it happened, was not in the waybill, and therefore 

COUld not have been hooked. 

20 No dignity is perfect which doe- qoI at some 
point ally itself with the mysterious. The connection 
of the mail with the state and the executive govern- 
ment — a connection obvious, but yet not strictly 

defined — gave to the whole mail establishment 
25 an official grandeur which did us service on the 

roads, and invested us with seasonable terrors. 

Not the less impressive were those terrors because 

their legal limits were imperfectly ascertained. 

Look at those turnpike gates: with what deferential 
30 hurry, with what an obedient start, they fly open 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 81 

at our approach] Look at that long line of carts 
and carters ahead, audaciously usurping the very 
crest of the road. Ah! the traitors, they do not 
hear us as yet ; but, as soon as the dreadful blast of 
our horn reaches them with proclamation of our ap- •'• 
proach, see with what frenzy of trepidation they fly 
to their horses' lead-, and deprecate our wrath by 
the precipitation of their crane-neck quarterings. 
Treason they feel to be their crime: each individual 
carter feels himself under the ban of confiscation 10 
and attainder; his blood IS attainted through six 
generations; and nothing is wanting but the heads- 
man and his ax, the block and the sawdust, to 
close Up the vista of his horrors. What ! shall it 
be within benefit of clergy to delay the king's mes-15 
sage on the high road? — to interrupt the great 
respirations, ebb and Hood, systole and diastole, of 
the national intercourse? — to endanger the safety 
of tidings running day and night between all nations 
and languages? Or can it be fancied, amongst the 20 
weakest of men, that the bodies of the criminals 
will be given up to their widows for Christian burial? 
Now, the doubts which were raised as to our powers 
did more to wrap them in terror, by wrapping them 
in uncertainty, than could have been effected by 25 
the sharpest definitions of the law from the Quarter 
Sessions. We, on our parts (we, the collective 
mail, I mean), did our utmost to exalt the idea of 
our privileges by the insolence with which we 
wielded them. Whether this insolence rested upon 30 
law that gave it a sanction, or upon conscious power 



82 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

that haughtily dispensed with that sanction, equally 
it spoke from a potential station; and the agent, 
in each particular insolence of the moment, was 
viewed reverentially, as one having authority. 
5 Sometimes after breakfast his Majesty's mail 
would become frisky; and, in its difficult wheelings 
amongst the intricacies of early markets, it would 
upset an apple cart, a cart loaded with eggs, &c. 
Huge was the affliction and dismay, awful was the 

10 smash. I, as far as possible, endeavored in such 
a case to represent the conscience and moral sensi- 
bilities of the mail; and. when wildernesses of eggs 
were lying poached under horses' hoofs, then would 
I stretch forth my hands in sorrow, saying (in words 

15 too celebrated at that time, from the false echoes 1 
of Marengo), "Ah! wherefore 1 have we not time to 
weep over you?" — which was evidently impos- 
sible, since, in fact, we had not time to Laugh over 
them. Tied to a post-office allowance in some cases 

20 of fifty minutes for eleven miles, could the royal 
mail pretend to undertake the offices of sympathy 
and condolence? Could it be expected to provide 
tears for the accidents of the road? If even it 
seemed to trample on humanity, it did so. I felt, 

25 in discharge of its own more peremptory duties. 
Upholding the morality of the mail, a fortiori I 

1 "False echoes"": — Yes, false! for the words ascribed to 
Napoleon, as breathed to the memory <>f Desaix, never were ottered 
at all. They stand in the Bame category of theatrical fictions as 
the cry of the foundering line-of-battle ship Vengeur,a& the vaunt 
of General Cambronne at Waterloo, " La Garde meurt, rnais ne se 
rend pas," or as the repartees of Talleyrand. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 83 

upheld its rights; as a matter of duty, I stretched 
to the uttermost its privilege of imperial precedency, 
and astonished weak minds by the feudal powers 
which I hinted to be lurking constructively in the 
charters of this proud establishment. Once I re- 5 
member being on the box of the Holyhead mail. 
between Shrewsbury and Oswestry, when a tawdry 
thing from Birmingham, some "Tallyho" or "High- 
flyer/ 1 all flaunting with green and gold, came up 
alongside of us. What a contrast to our royal 10 
simplicity of form and color in this plebeian wretch ! 
The single ornament on our dark ground of chocolate 
color was the mighty shield of the imperial arms, 
but emblazoned in proportions as modest as a signet 
ring bears to a seal of office. Even this was dis-15 
played only on a single panel, whispering, rather 
than proclaiming, our relations to the mighty state; 
whilst the beast from Birmingham, our green-and- 
gold friend from false, fleeting, perjured Brummagem, 
had as much writing and painting on its sprawling 20 
flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the 
tombs of Luxor. For some time this Birmingham 
machine ran along by our side — a piece of famil- 
iarity that already of itself seemed to me sufficiently 
Jacobinical. But all at once a movement of the 25 
horses announced a desperate intention of leaving 
us behind. " Do you see that?" I said to the coach- 
man. — "I see," was his short answer. He was 
wide awake, — yet he waited longer than seemed 
prudent; for the horses of our audacious opponent 30 
had a disagreeable air of freshness and power. But 



84 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

his motive was loyal; his wish was that the Bir- 
mingham conceit should he full-blown before he 
froze it. When thai seemed right, he unloosed, or, 
to speak by a stronger word, he sprang, his known 

5 resources: he slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, 
or hunting leopards, after the affrighted game. 
How they could retain such a reserve of fiery power 
after the work they had accomplished seemed hard 
to explain. But on our side, besides the physical 

10 superiority, was a tower of moral strength, namely 
the king's name, "which they upon the adverse 
faction wanted." Passing them without an effort, 
as it seemed, we threw them into the rear with so 
lengthening an interval between us as proved in 

i."> itself the bitterest mockery of their presumption; 
whilst our guard blew back a shattering blast of 
triumph that was really too painfully full of derision. 

I mention this little incident for its connection 
with what followed. A Welsh rustic. Bitting behind 

20 me, asked if I had not felt my heart bum within 
me during the progress of the race'.' I said, with 

philosophic calmness, No; because we were not 
racing with a mail, so that no glory could be gained. 
In fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that such a 

•_'.". Birmingham thing should dare to challenge us. The 
Welshman replied that he didn't see that; for that 
a cat might look at a king, and a Brummagem 
coach might lawfully race the Holyhead mail. 
" Race us, if you like," I replied, "though even thai 

30 has an air of sedition ; but not beat us. This would 
have been treason; and for its own sake I am glad 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 85 

that the 'Tally ho' was disappointed." So dis- 
Batisfied did the Welshman seem with this opinion 
that at last I was obliged to tell him a very fine 
st<»rv from one of our elder dramatists: viz., that 
once, in some far Oriental kingdom, when the 5 
sultan of all the land, with his princes, ladies, and 
chief omralis, were flying their falcons, a hawk 
suddenly flew at a majestic eagle, and. in defiance 
of the eagle's natural advantages, in contempt also 
of the eagle's traditional royalty, and before the 10 
whole assembled field of astonished spectators from 
Agra and Lahore, killed the eagle on the spot. 
Amazement seize. I the sultan at the unequal con- 
test, and burning admiration for its unparalleled 
result. lie commanded that the hawk should bel6 
brought before him; he caressed the bird with 
enthusiasm; and he ordered that, for the commemo- 
ration of his matchless couraire, a diadem of gold 
and rubies should be solemnly placed on the hawk's 
head, but then that, immediately after this solemn 20 
coronation, the bird should be led off to execution, 
as the most valiant indeed of traitors, but not the 
less a traitor, as having dared to rise rebelliously 
against his liege lord and anointed sovereign, the 
eagle. "Now," said I to the Welshman, "to you25 
and me, as men of refined sensibilities, how painful 
it would have been that this poor Brummagem 
brute, the 'Tallyho/ in the impossible case of a 
victory over us, should have been crowned with 
Birmingham tinsel, with paste diamonds and Roman 30 
pearls, and then led off to instant execution.'' 



86 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

The Welshman doubted if that could be warranted 
by law. And, when I hinted at the 6th of Edward 
Longshanks, chap. 18, for regulating the precedency 
of coaches, as being probably the statute relied on 
5 for the capital punishment of such offenses, he re- 
plied dryly that, if the attempt to pass a mail really 
were treasonable, it was a pity that the "Tallyho" 
appeared to have so imperfect an acquaintance 
with law. 

io The modern modes of traveling cannot compare 
with the old mail-coach system in grandeur and 
power. They boast of more velocity. — not, how- 
ever, as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless 
knowledge, resting upon alien evidence: as, for 

15 instance, because somebody says that we have 
gone fifty miles in the hour, though we are far from 
feeling it as a personal experience; or upon the 
evidence of a result, as that actually we find our- 
selves in York four hours after leaving London. 

20 Apart from such an assertion, or such a result. I 
myself am little aware of the pace. Hut, seated 
on the old mail coach, we needed no evidence out 
of ourselves to indicate the velocity. On this 
system the word was not magna loquimur, as upon 

25 railways, but vivimus. Yes, "magna rin'mus"; 
we do not make verbal ostentation of our grandeur-, 
we realize our grandeurs in act, and in the very 
experience of life. The vital experience of the 
glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible 

30 on the question of our speed ; we heard our speed, 
we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 87 

was not the product of blind insensate agencies, 
that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated 
in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, 
in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thun- 
der-beating hoofs. The sensibility of the horse, 5 
uttering itself in the maniac light of his eye, might 
be the last vibration of such a movement; the 
glory of Salamanca might be the first. But the 
intervening links that connected them, that spread 
the earthquake of battle into the eyeballs of the 10 
horse, were the heart of man and its electric thrill- 
ings — kindling in the rapture of the fiery strife, 
and then propagating its own tumults by conta- 
gious shouts and gestures to the heart of his servant 
the horse. But now, on the new system of trav-15 
eling, iron tubes and boilers have disconnected 
man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion. 
Nile nor Trafalgar has power to raise an extra bub- 
ble in a steam kettle. The galvanic cycle is broken 
up forever; man's imperial nature no longer sends 20 
itself forward through the electric sensibility of 
the horse; the interagencies are gone in the mode 
of communication between the horse and his mas- 
ter out of which grew so many aspects of sublimity 
under accidents of mists that hid, or sudden blazes 25 
that revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight 
solitudes that awed. Tidings fitted to convulse 
all nations must henceforwards travel by culinary 
process; and the trumpet that once announced 
from afar the laureled mail, heart-shaking when 30 
heard screaming on the wind and proclaiming 



88 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

itself through the darkness to every village or soli- 
tary house on its route, has now given way forever 
to the pot-wallopings of the boiler. Thus have 
perished multiform openings for public expressions 
5 of interest, scenical yet natural, in great national 
tidings, — for revelations of faces and groups that 
could not offer themselves amongst the fluctuating 
mobs of a railway station. The gatherings of gazers 
about a laureled mail had one center, and acknowl- 
edged one sole interest. But the crowds attending 
at a railway station have as little unity as running 
water, and own as many centers as there are sepa- 
rate carriages in the train. 

How else, for example, than as a constant watcher 
i.-. for the dawn, and for the London mail that in sum- 
mer months entered about daybreak amongst the 
lawny thickets of Marlborough forest, couldst thou, 
sweet Fanny of the Bath road, have become the 
glorified inmate of my dream-'.' Yet Fanny, as 
20 the loveliest young woman for face and person that 
perhaps in my whole life I have beheld, merited 
the station which even now. from a distance of 
forty years, she holds in my dreams; yes. though 
by links of natural association she brings along 
•_•;, with her a troop of dreadful creatures, fabulous and 
not fabulous, that are more abominable to the 
heart than Fanny and the dawn are delightful. 

Miss Fanny of the Hath road, strictly speaking. 

lived at a mile's distance from that road, but came 

30 so continually to meet the mail that I on my frequent 

transits rarely missed her. and naturally connected 



THE ENGLISH MAIL CO Aril 89 

her image with the great thoroughfare where only 
I had ever seen her. Why she came so punctually 
I do not exactly know; but I believe with some 
burden of commissions, to be executed in Bath, 
which had gathered to her own residence as a cen- 5 
tral rendezvous for converging them. The mail 
coachman who drove the Bath mail and wore the 
royal livery 1 happened to be Fanny's grandfather. 
A good man he was. that loved his beautiful grand- 
daughter, and, loving her wisely, was vigilant over 10 
her deportment in any ease where young Oxford 
might happen to be concerned. Did my vanity 
then BUggesI that I myself, individually, could fall 
within the line of his terrors? Certainly not, as 
regarded any physical pretensions that I could 15 
plead; for Fanny (as a chance passenger from her 
own neighborhood once told me) counted in her 
train a hundred and ninety-nine professed admirers, 
if not open aspirants to her favor; and probably 
not one of the whole brigade but excelled myself 20 
in personal advantages. Ulysses even, with the 
unfair advantage of his accursed bow, could hardly 
have undertaken that amount of suitors. So the 

i " Wore the muni livery " : — The general impression was that 
tin- royal livery belonged of right to the mail coachmen as their 
professional dress. But that was an error. To the guard it did 
belong, I believe, and was obviously essential as an official war- 
rant, and as a means of instant identification for his person, in the 
discharge of his important public duties. But the coachman, and 
especially if his place in the series did not connect him immedi- 
ately with London and the General Post-Office, obtained the scarlet 
coat only as an honorary distinction after long (or, if not long, 
trying and special) service. 



90 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

danger might have seemed slight — only that 
woman is universally aristocratic; it is amongst 
her nobilities of heart that she is so. Now, the 
aristocratic distinctions in my favor might easily 

5 with Miss Fanny have compensated my physical 
deficiencies. Did I then make love to Fanny? 
Why, yes; about as much love as one could make 
whilst the mail was changing horses — a process 
which, ten years later, did not occupy above eighty 

10 seconds; but then, — viz., about Waterloo — it 
occupied five times eighty. Now, four hundred 
seconds offer a field quite ample enough for whisper- 
ing into a young woman's ear a greal deal of truth, 
and (by the way of parenthesis) some trifle of false- 

15 hood. Grandpapa did right, therefore, to watch me. 
And yet, as happens too often to the grandpapas 
of earth in a contest with the admirers of grand- 
daughters, how vainly would he have watched me 
had I meditated any evil whisper to Fanny! 

20 She, it is my belief, would have protected herself 
against any man's evil suggestions. But he, as 
the result showed, could not have intercepted the 
opportunities for such suggestions. Yet, why not? 
Was he not active ? Was he not blooming ? Bloom- 

25ing he was as Fanny herself. 

" Say, all our praises why should lords " 

Stop, that's not the line. 

" Say, all our roses why should girls engross ? " 

The coachman showed rosy blossoms on his face 
30 deeper even than his granddaughter's — his being 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 91 

drawn from the ale cask, Fanny's from the fountains 
of the dawn. But, in spite of his blooming face, 
some infirmities he had; and one particularly in 
which he too much resembled a crocodile. This 
lay in a monstrous inaptitude for turning round. 5 
The crocodile, I presume, owes that inaptitude to 
the absurd length of his back; but in our grand- 
papa it arose rather from the absurd breadth of his 
back, combined, possibly, with some growing stiff- 
ness in his legs. Now, upon this crocodile infirmity 10 
of his I planted a human advantage for tendering 
my homage to Miss Fanny. In defiance of all his 
honorable vigilance, no sooner had he presented 
to us his mighty Jovian back (what a field for dis- 
playing to mankind his royal scarlet!), whilst in- 15 
specting professionally the buckles, the straps, and 
the silvery turrets 1 of his harness, than I raised Miss 
Fanny's hand to my lips, and, by the mixed tender- 
ness and respectfulness of my manner, caused her 
easily to understand how happy it would make me 20 
to rank upon her list as No. 10 or 12: in which case 
a few casualties amongst her lovers (and, observe, 
they hanged liberally in those days) might have 
promoted me speedily to the top of the tree; as, 
on the other hand, with how much loyalty of sub- 25 

1 " Turrets: — As one who loves and venerates Chaucer for his 
unrivaled merits of tenderness, of picturesque characterization, 
and of narrative skill, I noticed with great pleasure that the word 
torrettes is used by him to designate the little devices through 
which the reins are made to pass. This same word, in the same 
exact sense, I heard uniformly used by many scores of illustrious 
mail coachmen to whose confidential friendship I had the honor of 
being admitted in my younger days, 



92 THE EN Q LIS II MAIL COACH 

mission I acquiesced by anticipation in her award, 
supposing that she should plant me in the very 
rearward of her favor, as No. 199 + 1. Most truly 
I loved this beautiful and ingenuous girl; and, had 

5 it not been for the Bath mail, timing all courtships 
by post-office allowance, heaven only knows what 
might have come of it. People talk of being over 
head and car- in love; now. the mail was the cause 
that I sank only over ears in love. — which, you 

in know, still left a trifle of brain to overlook the whole 
conduct of the affair. 

Ah. render! when I look back upon those days, 
it seems to me that all things change — all things 
perish. " Perish the roses and I he palms of kings " : 

15 perish even the crowns and trophies of Waterloo: 
thunder and lightning are not the thunder and 
lightning which I remember. Roses are degener- 
ating. The Fannies of our island — though this 
I say with reluctance — are not visibly improving ; 

•jo and the Bath road is notoriously superannuated. 
Crocodiles, you will say. are stationary. Mr. 
Waterton tells me that the crocodile does not change, 
— that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as 
good for riding upon as he was in the time of the 

■r. Pharaohs. Thai may be; but the reason is that 
the crocodile does not live fast — he is a slow coach. 
I believe it is generally understood among natu- 
ralists that the crocodile is a blockhead. It is my 
own impression that the Pharaohs were also bloek- 

30 heads. Now, as the Pharaohs and the crocodile 
domineered over Egyptian society, this accounts 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 93 

for a singular mistake that prevailed through in- 
numerable generations on the Nile. The crocodile 

made the ridiculous blunder of supposing man to 
be meant chiefly for his own eating. Man, taking 
a different view of the subject, naturally met that 5 
mistake by another: he viewed the crocodile as a 
thing sometimes to worship, but always to run away 
from. And this continued till Mr. Waterton 1 changed 
the relations between the animals. The mode of 
escaping from the reptile he showed to be not byio 
running away, but by leaping on its back booted 
and spurred. The tw«» animals had misunderstood 
each other. The use of the crocodile has now been 
cleared up — viz., to be ridden ; and the final cause 
of man is that he may improve the health of their, 
crocodile by riding him a-fox-hunting before break- 
fast. And it is pretty certain that any crocodile 
who has been regularly hunted through the season, 
and is master of the weight he carries, will take 
a six-barred gate now as well as ever he would have 20 
done in the infancy of the pyramids. 

If, therefore, the crocodile does not change, all 
things else undeniably do: even the shadow of the 

1 "Mr. Waterton ": — Had the reader lived through the last gen- 
eration, he would Tint need to be told that, some thirty or thirty-live 
years back, Mr. Waterton, a distinguished country gentleman of 
ancient family in Northumberland, publicly mounted and rode in 
top boots a savage old crocodile, that was restive and very imperti- 
nent, but all to no purpose. The crocodile jibbed and tried to kick, 
but vainly. He was no more able to throw the squire than Sinbad 
was to throw the old scoundrel who used his back without paying 
for it, until he discovered a mode (slightly immoral, perhaps, 
though some think not) of murdering the old fraudulent jockey, 
and so circuitously of unhorsing him. 



94 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

pyramids grows less. And often the restoration in 
vision of Fanny and the Bath road makes me too 
pathetically sensible of that truth. Out of the dark- 
ness, if I happen to call back the image of Fanny, 

5 uprises suddenly from a gulf of forty years a rose in 
June ; or, if I think for an instant of the rose in June, 
uprises the heavenly face of Fanny. One after the 
other, like the antiphonies in the choral service, 
rise Fanny and the rose in June, then back again the 

10 rose in June and Fanny. Then come both together, 
as in a chorus — roses and Fannies, Fannies and 
roses, without end, thick as blossoms in paradise. 
Then comes a venerable crocodile, in a royal livery 
of scarlet and gold, with sixteen capes; and the 

15 crocodile is driving four-in-hand from the box of 
the Bath mail. And suddenly we upon the mail 
are pulled up by a mighty dial, sculptured with the 
hours, that mingle with the heavens and the heavenly 
host. Then all at once we are arrived at Marlbor- 

20 ough forest, amongst the lovely households 1 of the 
roedeer; the deer and their fawns retire into the 
dewy thickets; the thickets are rich with roses; 
once again the roses call up the sweet countenance of 
Fanny ; and she, being the granddaughter of a croco- 

25 clile, awakens a dreadful host of semi-legendary 



1 " Households ": — Roedeer do not congregate in herds like 
the fallow or the red deer, hut by separate families, parents and 
children ; which feature of approximation to the sanctity of human 
hearths, added to their comparatively miniature and graceful pro- 
portions, conciliates to them an interest of peculiar tenderness, 
supposing even that this heautif ul creature is less characteristically 
impressed with the grandeurs of savage and forest life. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 95 

animals — griffins, dragons, basilisks, sphinxes — 
till at length the whole vision of fighting images 
crowds into one towering armorial shield, a vast em- 
blazonry of human charities and human loveliness 
that have perished, but quartered heraldically 5 
with unutterable and demoniac natures, whilst 
over all rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair female 
hand, with the forefinger pointing, in sweet, sorrow- 
ful admonition, upwards to heaven, where is sculp- 
tured the eternal writing which proclaims the frailty 10 
of earth and her children. 



Going Down with Victory 

But the grandest chapter of our experience within 
the whole mail-coach service was on those occasions 
when we went down from London with the news 
of victory. A period of about ten years stretched 15 
from Trafalgar to Waterloo; the second and third 
years of which period (1806 and 1807) were com- 
paratively sterile; but the other nine (from 1805 to 
1815 inclusively) furnished a long succession of vic- 
tories, the least of which, in such a contest of Titans, 20 
had an inappreciable value of position: partly for 
its absolute interference with the plans of our enemy, 
but still more from its keeping alive through central 
Europe the sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in 
France. Even to tease the coasts of our enemy, 25 
to mortify them by continual blockades, to insult 
them by capturing if it were but a baubling schooner 
under the eyes of their arrogant armies, repeated 



96 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

from time to time a sullen proclamation of power 
lodged in one quarter to which the hopes of Christen- 
dom turned in secret. How much more loudly 
must this proclamation have spoken in the audacity * 

5 of having bearded the elite of their troops, and hav- 
ing beaten them in pitched battles ! Five years of life 
it was worth paying down for the privilege of an out- 
side place on a mail coach, when carrying down the 
first tidings of any such event. And it is to be noted 

10 that, from our insular situation, and the multitude 
of our frigates disposable for the rapid transmission 
of intelligence, rarely did any unauthorized rumor 
steal away a prelibation from the first aroma of 
the regular dispatches. The government news was 

15 generally the earliest news. 

From eight p.m. to fifteen or twenty minutes later 
imagine the mails assembled on parade in Lombard 
Street ; where, at that time, 2 and not in St. Martin's- 
le-Grand, was seated the General Post-Office. In 

1 " Audacity " : -»- Such the French accounted it ; and it has struck 
me that Soult would not have heen so popular in London, at the 
period of her present Majesty's coronation, or in Manchester, on 
occasion of his visit to that town, if they had been aware of the 
insolence with which he spoke of us in notes written at intervals 
from the field of Waterloo. As though it had heen mere felony in 
our army to look a French one in the face, he said in more notes 
than one, dated from two to four p.m. on the field of Waterloo, 
"Here are the English — we have them; they are caught en fla- 
grant delit." Yet no man should have known us better; no man 
had drunk deeper from the cup of humiliation than Soult had in 
1809, when ejected by us with headlong violence from Oporto, and 
pursued through a long line of wrecks to the frontier of Spain ; 
and subsequently at Albuera, in the bloodiest of recorded battles, 
to say nothing of Toulouse, he should have learned our pretensions. 

2 " At that time " ;— I speak of the era previous to Waterloo. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 97 

what exact strength we mustered I do not remember; 
but, from the length of each separate attelage, we 
filled the street, though a long one, and though we 
were drawn up in double file. On any night the 
spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection 5 
of all the appointments about the carriages and the 
harness, their strength, their brilliant cleanliness, 
their beautiful simplicity — but, more than all, 
the royal magnificence of the horses — were what 
might first have fixed the attention. Every carriage 10 
on every morning in the year was taken down to an 
official inspector for examination: wheels, axles, 
linchpins, pole, glasses, lamps, were all critically 
probed and tested. Every part of every carriage 
had been cleaned, every horse had been groomed, 15 
with as much rigor as if they belonged to a private 
gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered 
itself always. But the night before us is a night of 
victory; and, behold ! to the ordinary display what 
a heart-shaking addition ! — horses, men, carriages, 20 
all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak leaves and 
ribbons. The guards, as being officially his Majes- 
ty's servants, and of the coachmen such as are within 
the privilege of the post-office, wear the royal liver- 
ies of course; and, as it is summer (for all the 25 
land victories were naturally won in summer), they 
wear, on this fine evening, these liveries exposed to 
view, without any covering of upper coats. Such 
a costume, and the elaborate arrangement of the 
laurels in their hats, dilate their hearts, by giving 30 
to them openly a personal connection with the great 



98 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

news in which already they have the general interest 
of patriotism. That great national sentiment sur- 
mounts and quells all sense of ordinary distinctions. 
Those passengers who happen to be gentlemen are 

5 now hardly to be distinguished as such except by 
dress ; for the usual reserve of their manner in speak- 
ing to the attendants has on this night melted away. 
One heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man 
by the transcendent bond of his national blood. 

10 The spectators, who are numerous beyond precedent, 
express their sympathy with these fervent feelings 
by continual hurrahs. Every moment are shouted 
aloud by the post-office servants, and summoned to 
draw up, the great ancestral names of cities known 

15 to history through a thousand years — Lincoln, 
Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, 
Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, 
Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen — expressing the grandeur 
of the empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the 

20 grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive 
radiation of its separate missions. Every moment 
you hear the thunder of lids locked down upon the 
mail bags. That sound to each individual mail is 
the signal for drawing off ; which process is the finest 

25 part of the entire spectacle. Then come the horses 
into play. Horses ! can these be horses that bound 
off with the action and gestures of leopards ? What 
stir ! — what sea-like ferment ! — what a thundering 
of wheels ! — what a trampling of hoofs ! — what a 

30 sounding of trumpets ! — what farewell cheers — 
what redoubling peals of brotherly congratulation, 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 99 

connecting the name of the particular mail — " Liv- 
erpool forever !" — with the name. of the particular 
victory — " Badajoz forever!" or "Salamanca for- 
ever!" The half-slumbering consciousness that all 
night long, and all the next day — perhaps for even 5 
a longer period — many of these mails, like fire 
racing along a train of gunpowder, will be kindling 
at every instant new successions of burning joy, has 
an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself, 
by multiplying to the imagination into infinity theio 
stages of its progressive diffusion. A fiery arrow 
seems to be let loose, which from that moment is 
destined to travel, without intermission, westwards 
for three hundred l miles — northwards for six hun- 

1 " Three hundred" :— Of necessity, this scale of measurement, 
to an American, if he happens to he a thoughtless man, must sound 
ludicrous. Accordingly, I remember a case in which an American 
writer indulges himself in the luxury of a little filming by ascrib- 
ing to an Englishman a pompous account of the Thames, constructed 
entirely upon American ideas of grandeur, and concluding in some- 
thing like these terms: — "Ami, sir, arriving at Loudon, this 
mighty father of rivers attains a breadth of at least two furlongs, 
having, in its winding course, traversed the astonishing distance of 
one hundred and seventy miles." And this the candid American 
thinks it fair to contrast with the scale of the Mississippi. Now, 
it is hardly worth while to answer a pure fiction gravely ; else 
one might say that no Englishman out of Bedlam ever thought of 
looking in an island for the rivers of a continent, nor, conse- 
quently, could have thought of looking for the peculiar grandeur 
of the Thames in the length of its course, or in the extent of soil 
which it drains. Yet, if he had been so absurd, the American 
might have recollected that a river, not to be compared with the 
Thames even as to volume of water — viz., the Tiber — has contrived 
to make itself heard of in this world for twenty-five centuries 
to an extent not reached as yet by any river, however corpulent, 
of his own land. The glory of the Thames is measured by the 
destiny of the population to which it ministers, by the commerce 



100 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

dred ; and the sympathy of our Lombard Street 
friends at parting is exalted a hundredfold by a sort 
of visionary sympathy with the yet slumbering sym- 
pathies which in so vast a succession we are going to 

5 awake. 

Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, 
and issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the 
northern suburbs, we soon begin to enter upon our 
natural pace of ten miles an hour. In the broad 

10 light of the summer evening, the sun, perhaps, only 
just at the point of setting, we are seen from every 
story of every house. Heads of every age crowd to 
the windows; young and old understand the lan- 
guage of our victorious symbols; and rolling volleys 

15 of sympathizing cheers run along us, behind us, 
and before us. The beggar, rearing himself against 
the wall, forgets his lameness — real or assumed — 
thinks not of his whining trade, but stands erect, 
with bold exulting smiles, as we pass him. The vic- 

20tory has healed him, and says, Be thou whole! 
Women and children, from garrets alike and cellars, 
through infinite London, look down or look up with 

which it supports, by the grandeur of the empire in which, though 
far from the Largest, it is the most influential stream. Upon 
some such scale, and not hy a transfer of Columbian standards, 
is the course of our English mails to be valued. The American 
may fancy the effect of his own valuations to our English ears hy 
supposing the case of a Siberian glorifying his country in these 
terms: — "These wretches, sir, in France and England, cannot 
march half a mile in any direction without finding a house where 
food can be had and lodging ; whereas such is the noble desolation 
of our magnificent country that in many a direction for a thou- 
sand miles I will engage that a dog shall not find shelter from a 
snowstorm, nor a wren find an apology for breakfast." 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 101 

loving eyes upon our gay ribbons and our martial 
laurels ; sometimes kiss their hands ; sometimes hang 
out, as signals of affection, pocket handkerchiefs, 
aprons, dusters, anything that, by catching the sum- 
mer breezes, will express an aerial jubilation. On 5 
the London side of Barnet, to which we draw near 
within a few minutes after nine, observe that private 
carriage which is approaching us. The weather 
being so warm, the glasses are all down ; and one may 
read, as on the stage of a theater, everything thatio 
goes on within. It contains three ladies — one 
likely to be "mamma," and two of seventeen or 
eighteen, who are probably her daughters. What 
lovely animation, what beautiful unpremeditated 
pantomime, explaining to us every syllable that 15 
passes, in these ingenuous girls ! By the sudden 
start and raising of the hands on first discovering 
our laureled equipage, by the sudden movement 
and appeal to the elder lady from both of them, and 
by the heightened color on their animated coun-20 
tenances, we can almost hear them saying, " See, see ! 
Look at their laurels ! Oh, mamma ! there has been 
a great battle in Spain ; and it has been a great vic- 
tory." In a moment we are on the point of passing 
them. We passengers — I on the box, and the two 25 
on the roof behind me — raise our hats to the 
ladies; the coachman makes his professional salute 
with the whip; the guard even, though punctilious 
on the matter of his dignity as an officer under the 
crown, touches his hat. The ladies move to us, in 30 
return, with a winning graciousness of gesture; all 



102 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACB 

smile on each Bide in a way that nobody could 
misunderstand, and that nothing short of a grand 
national Bympathy could ><» instantaneously prompt. 

Will these ladies say that we are nothing to them? 

5 Oh, no; they will not say that. They cannot deny — 
they do not deny — that for this night they are OUT 

sist< atle or simple, Bcholar or illiterate ser- 

vant, for twelve hours t<> come, we on the outside 

have the honor to he their brothers. Those p«'<-r 

m women, again, who atop to gaze upon us with delight 
nt the entrance of Barnet, and seem, by their air of 
weariness, to he returning from labor — do you 

mean to Bay that they are washerwomen and char- 
women? Oh, my poor friend you are quite mis- 
i.-, taken. I assure you they bI and in a far higher rank ; 
for this one night they fed themselves by birthright 
to he daughters of England and answer to no hum- 
bler title. 

Every joy, however eveD rapturous joy — such 

20 is the Bad law of earth - may carry with it grief, <>r 
fear of grief, to Borne. Three miles beyond Barnet, 
we see approaching us another private carriage, 
nearly repeating the circumstances of the former 

case. Here, also, the glasses are all down; here, 

25 also, is an elderly lady seated : hut the two daughters 
are missing; for the single yimnL r person Bitting by 
the lady's Bide Seems to he an attendant — -so 1 
judge from her dress and her air of respectful re- 
serve. The lady is in mourning; and her counte- 

90 nance expresses sorrow. At first she does not look 
up: so that 1 believe Bhe is not aware of our ap- 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 103 

proach, until Bhe hears the measured beating of our 
horses' hoofs. Theu Bhe raises her eyes to settle 
them painfully ou our triumphal equipage. Our 
decorations explain the case to her at once; but Bhe 
beholds them with apparent anxiety, or even with 5 
terror Some time before this, I. finding it difficult 
to hit a flying mark when embarrassed by the coach- 
man's person and reins intervening, had given to the 
guard a "Courier" evening paper, containing the 
gazette, for the next carriage that might pass. Ac- 10 
cordingly he tossed it in, bo folded that the huge 
capitals expressing some such legend as glorious 
victory might catch the eye at once. To see the 
paper, however, at all, interpreted as it was by our 
ensigns of triumph, explained everything; and, if 15 
the guard were right in thinking the lady to have 
received it with a gesture of horror, it could not be 
doubtful that she had suffered some deep personal 

affliction in connection with this Spanish war. 

Here, now, was the case of one who, having for-20 
merly suffered, might, erroneously perhaps, be dis- 
tressing herself with anticipations of another similar 
Buffering. That same night, and hardly three hours 
later, occurred the reverse case. A poor woman, 
who too probably would find herself, in a day or two, 25 
to have suffered the heaviest of afflictions by the 
battle, blindly allowed herself to express an exulta- 
tion so unmeasured in the news and its details as 
gave to her the apparance which amongst Celtic 
Highlanders is called fey. This was at some little 30 
town where we changed horses an hour or two after 



104 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

midnight. Some fair or wake had kept the people up 
out of their beds, and had occasioned a partial illu- 
mination of the stalls and booths, presenting an 
unusual but very impressive effect. We saw many 
5 lights moving about as we drew near; and perhaps 
the most striking scene on the whole route was our 
reception at this place. The flashing of torches 
and the beautiful radiance of blue lights (technically, 
Bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses; the 

10 fine effect of such a Bhowery and ghostly illumination 
falling upon our flowers and glittering laurels 1 ; 
whilst all around ourselves, that formed a center of 
light, the darkness gathered on the rear and Hanks 
in massy blackness: these optical splendors, to- 

i.-. -ether with the prodigious enthusiasm of the people, 
composed a picture at once BCenical and affecting, 
theatrical and holy. A< we stayed for three or four 
minutes, I alighted; and immediately from a dis- 
mantled stall in the street, where no doubt she had 

20 been presiding through the earlier pari of the night, 
advanced eagerly a middle-aged woman. The sight 
of my newspaper it was that had drawn her atten- 
tion upon myself. The victory which we were 
currying down to the provinces on this occasion was 

25the imperfect one of Talavera — imperfect for ite 
results, such was the virtual treachery of the Spanish 
general, Cuesta, but not imperfect in its ever 
memorable heroism. I told her the main outline 

i" Glittering laurels" : — I must observe that the color of 
green Buffers almost a spiritual change and exaltation under the 
effect of Bengal lights. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 105 

of "the battle. The agitation of her enthusiasm 
had been so conspicuous when listening, and when 
first applying for information, that I could not but 
ask her if she had not some relative in the Peninsular 
army. Oh yes; her only son was there. In what 5 
regiment ? He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. 
My heart sank within me as she made that answer. 
This sublime regiment, which an Englishman should 
never mention without raising his hat to their mem- 
ory, had made the most memorable and effectiveio 
charge recorded in military annals. They leaped 
their horses — over a trench where they could; into 
it, and with the result of death or mutilation, when 
they could //"/. What proportion cleared the trench 
is nowhere stated. Those who did closed up and 15 
went down upon 1 he enemy with such divinity of 
fervor (I use the word divinity by design: the in- 
spiration of God must have prompted this move- 
ment for those whom even then He was calling to 
His presence) that two results followed. As re- 20 
garded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I believe, 
originally three hundred and fifty strong, paralyzed 
a French column six thousand strong, then ascended 
the hill, and fixed the gaze of the whole French 
army. As regarded themselves, the 23d were sup- 25 
posed at first to have been barely not annihilated; 
but eventually, I believe, about one in four survived. 
And this, then, was the regiment — a regiment al- 
ready for some hours glorified and hallowed to the 
ear of all London, as lying stretched, by a large 30 
majority, upon one bloody aceldama — in which 



106 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

the young trooper served whose mother was now 
talking in a spirit of such joyous enthusiasm. Did 
I tell her the truth? Had I the heart to break up 
her dreams? No. To-morrow, said I to myself — 

5 1 o-morrow or the next day, will publish the worst. 
For one night more wherefore should she not sleep in 
peace? After to-morrow the chances are too many 
that peace will forsake her pillow. This brief respite, 
then, let her owe to my gift and my forbearance 

10 But, if I told her not of the bloody price that had 
been paid, not therefore was I silent on the contribu- 
tions from her son's regiment to that day's service 
and glory. I showed her not the funeral banners 
under which the noble regiment was sleeping. 1 

15 lifted not the overshadowing laurels from the bloody 
trench in which horse and rider lay mangled together. 
But I told her how these dear children of England, 
officers and privates, had Leaped their horses over all 
obstacles as gayly as hunters to the morning's chase. 

20 I told her how they rode their horses into the midst 
of death, — saying to myself, but not Baying to her, 
" and laid down their young lives for thee, O mother 
England ! as willingly — poured out their noble 
blood as cheerfully — as ever, after a long day's 

25 sport, when infants, they had rested their weary 
heads upon their mother's knees, or had sunk to 
sleep in her arms." Strange it is, yet true, that she 
seemed to have no fears for her son's safety, even 
after this knowledge that the 23d Dragoons had been 

30 memorably engaged; but so much was she enrap- 
tured by the knowledge that his regiment, and there- 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 107 

fore that he, had rendered conspicuous service in the 
dreadful conflict — a service which had actually 
made them, within the last twelve hours, the fore- 
most topic of conversation in London — so abso- 
lutely was fear swallowed up in joy — that, in the 5 
mere simplicity of her fervent nature, the poor 
woman threw her arms round my neck, as she 
thought of her son, and gave to me the kiss which 
Becretly was meant for him. 

Section II — The Vision of Sudden Death 

What is to be taken as the predominant opinion 10 
of man, reflective and philosophic, upon sudden 
DEATH? It is remarkable that, in different condi- 
tions of society, sudden death has been variously 
regarded as the consummation of an earthly career 
most fervently to be desired, or, again, as that con- is 
summation which is with most horror to be depre- 
cated. Caesar the Dictator, at his last dinner party 
(ca na), on the very evening before his assassination, 
when the minutes of his earthly career were num- 
bered, being asked what death, in his judgment, 20 
might be pronounced the most eligible, replied 
" That which should be most sudden." On the other 
hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, when 
'breathing forth supplications, as if in some represen- 
tative character, for the whole human race prostrate 25 
before God, places such a death in the very van of 
horrors : " From lightning and tempest ; from plague, 
pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, 



108 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

and from sudden death — Good Lord, deliver us." 
Sudden death is here made to crown the climax in a 
grand ascent of calamities; it is ranked among the 
last of curses; and yet by the noblest of Romans 
5 it was ranked as the first of blessings. In that differ- 
ence most readers will see little more than the eg 
tial difference between Christianity and Paganism. 
But this, on consideration. I doubt. The Christian 
Church may be righl in its estimate of sudden death ; 

10 and it is a natural feeling, though after all it may 
also be an infirm one. to wi>h for a quiet dismissal 
from life, as that which 8< i m& most reconcilable with 
meditation, with penitential retrospects, and with 
the humilities of farewell prayer. There d<»e< nut. 

15 however, occur to me any direct scriptural warrant 
for this earnest petition of the English Litany, unless 

under a Special construction of the word '•sudden."' 

It seems a petition indulged rather and conceded to 
human infirmity than exacted from human piety. 

20 It is not so much a doctrine built upon the eterni- 
ties of the Christian Bystem as a plausible opinion 
built upon special varieties of physical temperament. 
Let. that, however, be a- it may, two remarks sug- 
gest themselves as prudent restraints upon a doc- 

25 trine which else may wander, and has wandered, into 
an uncharitable superstition. The first is this: 
that many people are likely to exasperate the horror 
of a sudden death from the disposition to lay a false 
stress upon words or acts simply because by an acci- 

3odent they have become final words or acts. If a 
man dies, for instance, by some sudden death when 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 109 

Ik* happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely 
regarded with peculiar honor; as though the in- 
toxication were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. 
But that is unphilosophic. The man was. or he was 
not, habitually a drunkard. If not, if his intoxica- 5 
tion were a solitary accident, there can be no reason 
for allowing special emphasis to this act simply be- 
cause through misfortune it became his final act. 
Nor, on the other hand, if it were no accident, but 
one of his habitual transgressions, will it be the more lo 
habitual or the more a transgression because some 
sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused this 
habitual transgression to be also a final one. Could 
the man have had any reason even dimly to foresee 
his own sudden death, there would have been a new lb 

feature in his act of intemperance — a feature of pre- 
sumption and irreverence, as in one that, having 
known himself drawing near to the presence of ( rod, 
should have suited his demeanor to an expectation 
so awful. Hut this is no pari of the case supposed. 20 
And the only new element in the man's act is not any 
element of special immorality, but simply of special 
misfortune. 

The other remark has reference to the meaning of 
the word sudden. Very possibly Caesar and the25 
Christian Church do not differ in the way supposed, 
— that is, do not differ by any difference of doctrine 
as 1. <'tween Pagan and Christian views of the moral 
temper appropriate to death; but perhaps they are 
contemplating different cases. Both contemplate a 30 
violent death, a Biufluvuros — death that is piatos, 



110 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

or, in other words, death that is brought about, not 
by internal and spontaneous change, but by active 
force having its origin from without. In this mean- 
ing the two authorities agree. Thus far they arc in 

5 harmony. But the difference is that the Roman 
by the word "sudden" means unlingering, whereas 
the Christian Litany by "sudden death" means a 
deatli without warning, consequently without any 
available summons to religious preparation. The 

10 poor mutineer who kneels down to gather into his 
heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pitying 
comrades dies by a most sudden death in C&sar's 

Bense; one shock, one mighty spasm, one (possibly 
not one) groan, and all is over. But', in the sens 
15 the Litany, the mutineer's death is far from sudden : 
his offense originally, his imprisonment, his trial, 
the interval between his sentence and it- execution, 

having all furnished him with separate warnings of 

his fate — having all Bummoned him to meet it 

20 with solemn preparation. 

Here at once, in this Bnarp verbal distinction, we 

comprehend the faithful earnestness with which a 
holy Christian Church pleads on behalf of her poor 
departing children that God would vouchsafe to 

26 them the last great privilege and distinction pos- 
sible on a deathbed, viz., the opportunity of un- 
troubled preparation for facing this mighty trial. 
Sudden death, as a mere variety in the modes of 
dying where death in some shape is inevitable, pro- 

30 poses a question of choice which, equally in the 
Roman and the Christian sense, will be variously 



THE EN0L1SB MAIL COACH 111 

answered according to each man's variety of tem- 
perament. Meantime, one aspect of sudden death 
there is, one modification, upon which no doubt can 
arise, that of all martyrdoms it is the most agitating 

— viz., where it surprises a man under circumstances 5 
which offer (or which seem to offer) some hurrying, 
flying, inappreciably minute chance of evading it. 
Sudden as the danger which it affronts must be any 
effort by which such an evasion can be accomplished. 
Even that, even the Bickening necessity for hurrying 10 
in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be 
vain, — even that anguish is liable to a hideous 

operation in one particular case: viz., where the 
appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self- 
preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf ofis 
some other life besides your own, accidentally 
thrown upon your protection. To fail, to collapse 
in a service merely your own. might seem compara- 
tively venial; though, in fact, it is far from venial. 
But to fail in a case where Providence has suddenly 20 
thrown into your hands the final interests of another, 

— a fellow-creature shuddering between the gates 
of life and death: this, to a man of apprehensive 
conscience, would mingle the misery of an atro- 
cious criminality with the misery of a bloody calam-25 
ity. You are called upon, by the case supposed, 
possibly to die, but to die at the very moment when, 
by any even partial failure or effeminate collapse 
of your energies, you will be self-denounced as a mur- 
derer. You had but the twinkling of an eye for 30 
your effort, and that effort might have been una vail- 



112 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

ing; but to have risen to the level of such an effort 
would have rescued you, though not from dying, 
yet from dying as a traitor to your final and farewell 
duty. 
5 The situation here contemplated exposes a dread- 
ful ulcer, lurking far down in the depths of human 
nature. It is not thai men generally are summoned 
to face such awful trials. But potentially, and in 
shadowy outline, such a trial is moving subterrane- 

loously in perhaps all men'e natures. Upon the secret 
mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly projected, 
perhaps, to every one of us. That dream, so famil- 
iar to childhood, of meeting a lion. and. through 
languishing prostration in hope and the energies of 

15 hope, that constant sequel of lying down before the 
lion publishes the secret frailty of human nature — 
reveals its deep-seated falsehood to itself — records 
its abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us 
escapes that dream; perhaps, as by some sorrowful 

2odoom of man. that dream repent- for every one of us, 
through every generation, the original temptation in 
Eden. Every one of us. in this dream, has a bait 
offered to the infirm places of his own individual will ; 
once again a snare is presented for tempting him 

25 into captivity to a luxury of ruin; once again, as in 
aboriginal Paradise, the man falls by his own choice; 
again, by infinite iteration, the ancient earth groans 
to Heaven, through her secret caves, over the weak- 
ness of her child. " Xature, from her seat, sighing 

30 through all her works," again "gives signs of woe 
that all is lost"; and again the counter sigh is re- 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 113 

peated to the sorrowing heavens for the endless 
rebellion against God. It is not without probability 
that in the world of dreams every one of us ratifies 
for himself the original transgression. In dreams, 
perhaps under some secret conflict of the midnight 5 
sleeper, lighted up to the consciousness at the time, 
but darkened to the memory as soon as all is finished, 
each several child of our mysterious race completes 
for himself the treason of the aboriginal fall. 

The incident, so memorable in itself by its features 10 
of horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the eye, 
which furnished the text for this reverie upon Sudden 
Death occurred to myself in the dead of night, as a 
solitary spectator, when seated on the box of the 
Manchester and Glasgow mail, in the second or third 15 
Bummer after Waterloo. I find it necessary to relate 
the circumstances, because they are such as could 
not have occurred unless under a singular combina- 
tion of accidents. In those days, the oblique and 
lateral communications with many rural post-offices 20 
were so arranged, either through necessity or through 
defect of system, as to make it requisite for the 
main northwestern mail (i.e., the down mail) on 
reaching Manchester to halt for a number of hours; 
how many, I do not remember; six or seven, 1 25 
think; but the result was that, in the ordinary 
course, the mail recommenced its journey north- 
wards about midnight. Wearied with the long 
detention at a gloomy hotel, I walked out about 
eleven o'clock at night for the sake of fresh air; 30 
meaning to fall in with the mail and resume my seat 



114 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

at the post-office. The night, however, being yet 
dark, as the moon had scarcely risen, and the streets 
being at that hour empty, so as to offer no opportuni- 
ties for asking the road, I lost my way. and did not 

5 reach the post-office until it was considerably past 
midnight : but, to my great relief (as it was impor- 
tant for me to be in West moreland by the morning), 
1 saw in the huge saucer eyes of the mail, blazing 
through the gloom, an evidence that my chance was 

in not yet lost. Past the time it was; but. by some 
rare accident, the mail was not even yet ready to 
start. I ascended to my seat on the box. where my 
cloak was still lying as it had lain at the Bridge- 
water Arms. I had left it there in imitation of a 

in nautical discoverer, who Leaves a bit of bunting on 
the shore of his discovery, by way of warning off the 
ground the whole human race, and notifying to the 
Christian and the heathen worlds, with his best 
compliments, that he has hoisted his pocket handker- 

20 chief once and forever upon that virgin soil: thence- 
forward claiming the jus <!<>>, unit to the top of the 
atmosphere above it. and also the right ^\ driving 
shafts to the center of the earth below it ; BO that all 
people found after this warning either aloft in upper 

26 chambers of the atmosphere, or groping in subter- 
raneous shafts, or squatting audaciously on the sur- 
face of the soil, will be treated as trespassers' — 
kicked, that is to say, or decapitated, as circum- 
stances may BUggest, by their very faithful servant, 

30 the owner of the said pocket handkerchief. In the 
present case, it is probable that my cloak might not 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 115 

have boon respected, and the jus gentium might have 
been cruelly violated in my person — for, in the dark, 
people commit deeds of darkness, gas being a great 
ally of morality; but it so happened that on this 
aighl there was no other outside passenger; and thus 5 
the crime, which else was but too probable, missed 
fire for want of a criminal. 

Having mounted the box, I took a small quan- 
tity of laudanum, having already traveled two hun- 
dred and fifty miles — viz., from a point seventyio 
miles beyond London. In the taking of laudanum 
there was nothing extraordinary. Hut by accident 
it drew upon me the special attention of my assessor 
on the box. the coachman. And in that also there 
was nothing extraordinary. Hut by accident, audio 
with great delight, it drewmyown attention to the 
fact that this coachman was a monster in point of 
bulk, and that he had but one eye. In fact, he had 
heen foretold by Virgil as 

14 Bfonstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." 20 

He answered to the conditions in every one of the 

items: — 1, a monster he was; 2, dreadful; 3, 
shapeless; 4, huge; 5, who had lost an eye. But 
why should that delight me? Had he been one of 
the Calendars in the " Arabian Nights," and had paid 28 
down his eye as the price of his criminal curiosity, 
what right had / to exult in his misfortune? I did 
not exult; I delighted in no man's punishment, 
though it were even merited. But these personal 
distinctions (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) identified in an instant 30 



116 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

an old friend of mine whom I had known in the south 
for some years as the most masterly of mail coach- 
men. He was the man in all Europe that could (if 
any could) have driven six-in-hand full gallop over 
5AI Sirat — that dreadful bridge of Mahomet, with 
no side battlements, and of extra room not enough 
for a razor's edge — leading right across the bottom- 
less gulf. Under this eminent man. whom in Greek 
I eognominated Cyclops Diphrttates (Cyclops the 
10 Charioteer) , I. and others known to me, studied the 
diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant 

to be pedantic. As a pupil, though I paid extra 

fees, it is to be lamented that I did not stand high 
in his esteem. It showed his dogged honesty 

15 (though, observe, not his discernment) that he could 
not see my merits. Let us excuse his absurdity 
in this particular by remembering his want of an 
eye. Doubtless that made him blind to my merit-. 
In the art of conversation, however, he admitted 

20 that I had the whip hand of him. On the present 
occasion great joy was at our meeting. But what 

was Cyclops doing here? Had the medical men 
recommended northern air, or how? I collected, 
from such explanations as he volunteered, that he 

25 had an interest at stake in some suit-at-law now 
pending at Lancaster; so that probably he had got 
himself transferred to this station for the purpose of 
connecting with his professional pursuits an instant 
readiness for the calls of his lawsuit. 

90 Meantime, what are we stopping for? Surely we 
have now waited long enough. Oh, this procras- 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 117 

tinating mail, and this procrastinating post-office! 
Can't they take a lesson upon that subject from me? 
Some people have called me procrastinating. Yet 
you are witness, reader, that I was here kept wait- 
ing for the post-office. Will the post-office lay its 5 
hand on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and 
ri that ever it waited for me? What are they 
about? The guard tells me that there is a large 
extra accumulation of foreign mails this night, 
owing to irregularities caused by war, by wind, byio 
weather, in the packet service, which as yet does not 
benefit at all by steam. For an (\vtni hour, it seems, 
the post-office has been engaged in threshing out the 
pure wheaten correspondence of Glasgow, and win- 
nowing it from the chaff of all baser intermediate 15 
towns. Bui at last all is finished. Sound your 
horn, guard! Manchester, good-by 1 we've lost an 
hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office: 
which, however, though I do not mean to part with 
a serviceable ground of complaint, and one which 20 
really is such for the horses, to me secretly is an 
advantage, since it compels us to look sharply for 
t his lost hour amongst the next eight or nine, and to 
recover it (if we can) at the rate of one mile extra 
per hour. Off we are at last, and at eleven miles an 25 
hour; and for the moment I detect no changes in the 
energy or in the skill of Cyclops. 

From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually 
(though not in law) is the capital of Westmoreland, 
there were at this time seven stages of eleven miles 30 
each. The first five of these, counting from Man- 



118 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

Chester, terminate in Lancaster; which is therefore 
fifty-five miles north of Manchester, and the same 
distance exactly from Liverpool. The first three 
Stages terminate in Preston (called, by way of dis- 
tinction from other towns of that name, Proud 
Preston) ; at which place it is that the separate roads 
from Liverpool and from Manchester to the north 
became confluent. 1 Within these firsl three sti 
lay the foundation, the progress, and termination of 
10 our night's adventure. During the first Btage, 1 

found out that Cyclops was mortal; he was liable 
to the shocking affection of sleep — a thing which 
previously I had never suspected. If a man in- 
dulges in the vicious habit of sleeping, all the skill 
i:. in aurigation of Apollo himself, with the horses <»t 

Aurora to execute his notion-, avails him nothing. 

"Oh, Cyclops!" I exclaimed, "thou art mortal. 
My friend, thou snorest." Through the first eleven 

mile.-, however, this infirmity — which I grieve to 
30 Say that he shared with the whole Pagan Pantheon 
— betrayed itself only by brief snatches. On wak- 
ing up. he made an apology for himself which, in- 
stead of mending matters, laid open a gloomy vista 
of coming disasters. The summer assizes, he re- 
25 minded me. were now going on at Lancaster: in 



.,,/„, „/ •• ;_ Suppose a capital V (the Pythagorean letter) : 
Lancaster is ;ii the foot of this letter; Liverpool at the tup of the 
right branch ; Manchester al the top of the left: Proud Preston at 
the center, where tin- two branches unite. It Is thirty-three miles 
along either of the two branches . it is twenty-two miles along the 
stem, — viz.. from l'nM.ni in the middle to Lancaster at the root. 
There's a lesson in geography foi the reader! 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 119 

consequence of which for three nights and three days 
he had not lain down on a bed. During the day he 
was waiting for his own summons as a witness 
on the trial in which he was interested, or else, lest 
he should be missing at the critical moment, was 5 
drinking with the other witnesses under the pastoral 
surveillance of the attorneys. During the night, 
or that part of it which at sea would form the middle 
watch, he was driving. This explanation certainly 
accounted for his drowsiness, but in a way which id 
made it much more alarming; since now, after 
several days' resistance to this infirmity, at length 
he was Bteadily giving way. Throughout the sec- 
ond stage he grew more and more drowsy. In the 
second mile of the third stage he surrendered himself is 
finally and without a Btruggle to his perilous temp- 
tation. All his past resistance had but deepened 
the weight of this final oppression. Seven atmos- 
pheres of sleep rest e< I upon him; and. to consummate 
the case, our worthy guard, after singing "Love 20 
amongst the Roses" for perhaps thirty times, 
without invitation and without applause, had in 
revenge moodily resigned himself to slumber — not 
so deep, doubtless, as the coachman's, but deep 
enough for mischief. And thus at last, about ten 25 
miles from Preston, it came about that I found my- 
self left in charge of his Majesty's London and Glas- 
gow mail, then running at the least twelve miles an 
hour. 

What made this negligence less criminal than else 30 
it must have been thought was the condition of the 



120 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

roads at night during the assizes. At that time, 
all the law business of populous Liverpool, and 
also of populous Manchester, with its vast cincture 
of populous rural districts, was called up by ancient 
5 usage to the tribunal of Lilliputian Lancaster. To 
break up this old traditional usage required, 1, a 
conflict with powerful established interests, 2, a 
large system of new arrangements, and 3, a new 
parliamentary statute. But as yet this change was 

10 merely in contemplation. As things were at present, 
twice in the year ' so vast a body of business rolled 
northwards from the southern quarter of the county 
that for a fortnight at least it occupied the severe 
exertions of two judges in its dispatch. The conse- 

lsquence of this was that every horse available for 
such a service, along the whole line of road, was ex- 
hausted in carrying down the multitudes of people 
who were parties to the different suits. By sunset, 
therefore, it usually happened that, through utter 

20 exhaustion amongst men and horses, the road sank 
into profound silence. Except the exhaustion in 
the vast adjacent county of York from a contested 
election, no such silence succeeding to no such fiery 
uproar was ever witnessed in England. 

25 On this occasion the usual silence and solitude pre- 
vailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was 
to be heard. And, to strengthen this false luxurious 
confidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also 

1,1 Twice in the year": — There were at that time only two 
assizes even in the most populous counties — viz., the Lent Assizes 
and the Summer Assizes. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 121 

that the night was one of peculiar solemnity and 
peace. For my own part, though slightly alive to 
the possibilities of peril, I had so far yielded to the 
influence of the mighty calm as to sink into a pro- 
found reverie. The month was August; in the 5 
middle of which lay my own birthday — a festival 
to every thoughtful man suggesting solemn and often 
sigh-born 1 thoughts. The county was my own native 
county — upon which, in its southern section, more 
than upon any equal area known to man past orio 
present, had descended the original curse of labor 
in its heaviest form, not mastering the bodies only of 
men, as of slaves, or criminals in mines, but working 
through the fiery will. Upon no equal space of 
earth was, or ever had been, the same energy of 15 
human power put forth daily. At this particular 
season also of the assizes, that dreadful hurricane of 
flight and pursuit, as it might have seemed to a 
stranger, which swept to and from Lancaster all day 
long, hunting the county up and down, and regu-20 
larly subsiding back into silence about sunset, could 
not fail (when united with this permanent distinc- 
tion of Lancashire as the very metropolis and cita- 
del of labor) to point the thoughts pathetically 
upon that counter vision of rest, of saintly re- 25 
pose from strife and sorrow, towards which, as to 
their secret haven, the profounder aspirations of 
man's heart are in solitude continually traveling. 

1 " Sigh-born" : — I owe the suggestion of this word to an 
obscure remembrance of a beautiful phrase in " Giraldus Cam- 
brensis" — viz., suspiriosse cogitationet. 



122 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

Obliquely, upon our left we were Hearing the sea; 
which also must, under the present circumstances, 
be repeating the general state of halcyon repose. 
The sea, the atmosphere, the li.Lclit , bore each an 

5 orchestral part in this universal lull. Moonlight 
and the first timid tremblings of the dawn were by 
this time blending; and the blendings were brought 
into a still more exquisite state of unity by a Blight 
silvery mist, motionless and dreamy, that covered 

lothe woods and fields, but with a veil of equable 
transparency. Except the feet of our own horses. 
— which, running on a sandy margin of the road, 

made but little disturbance, — there was do sound 

abroad. In the clouds and on the earth prevailed 

15 the same majestic peace; aid. in spite of all that the 
villain of a schoolmaster has done for the ruin of our 
sublimer thoughts, which are the thoughts of our 
infancy, we still believe in no such nonsense 

a limited atmosphere. Whatever we may swear 
20 with our false feigning lips, in our faithful hearts 
we still believe, and must forever believe, in fields 
of air traversing the total gulf between earth and 
the central heavens. Still, in the confidence of 
children that tread without fear every chamber in 
■_t, their father's house, and to whom no door is closed, 
we, in that Sabbatic vision which sometimes is 
revealed for an hour upon nights like this, ascend 
with easy steps from the sorrow-stricken fields of 
earth upwards t<» the sandals of God. 
30 Suddenly, from thoughts like these I was awak- 
ened to a sullen sound, as of some motion on the 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 123 

distant road. It stole upon the air for a moment; I 
listened in awe; hut then it died away. Once 
roused, however, I could not but observe with alarm 
the quickened motion of our horses. Ten years' 
experience had made my eye learned in the valuing 5 
of motion; and I saw that we were now running 
thirteen miles an hour. I pretend to no presence of 
mind. On the contrary, my fear is that I am miser- 
ably and shamefully deficient in that quality as re- 
gards action. The palsy of doubt and distraction 10 
hangs like some guilty weight of dark unfathomed 
remembrances upon my energies when the Bignal 
is flying for <i<-ti<m. But, on the other hand, this 
accursed gift I have, as regards (h<>u</ht, that in the 
first step towards the possibility of a misfortune lis 
see its total evolution; in t he radix of the series I see 
too certainly and i<><> instantly its entire expansion; 
in the first syllable of the dreadful sentence I read 
already the last. It was not that I feared for our- 
selves. Us our hulk and impetus charmed against 20 
peril in any collision. And I had ridden through too 
many hundreds of perils that were frightful to ap- 
proach, that were matter of laughter to look back 
upon, the first face of which was horror, the parting 
fail- a jest — for any anxiety to rest upon our inter- 2.-, 
ests. The mail was not built, I felt assured, nor 
bespoke, that could betray me who trusted to its 
protection. But any carriage that we could meet 
would be frail and light in comparison of ourselves. 
And I remarked this ominous accident of our situa-30 
tion, — we were on the wrong side of the road. But 



124 THE EX LIS II MAIL COACH 

then, it may be said, the other party, if other there 
was, might also be on the wrong side; and two 
wrongs might make a right. That was not likely. 
The same motive which had drawn us to the right- 
5 hand side of the road — viz., the luxury of the soft 
beaten sand as contrasted with the paved center — 
would prove at tractive to others. The two adverse 
carriages would therefore, to a certainty, be travel- 
ing on the same side; and from this side, as not 

10 being ours in law. the crossing over to the other 
would, of course, he looked for from us. 1 Our lamps, 
still lighted, would give the impression of vigilance 
on our part. And every creature that met us would 
rely upon US for quartering. 3 All this, and if the 

L5 separate links of the anticipation had been a thou- 
sand times more. I saw. not discursively, or by effort, 
or by succession, but by one flash of horrid simul- 
taneous intuition. 

Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the 

20 evil which might be gathering ahead, ah ! what a sul- 
len mystery of fear, what a sigh of woe, was that 
which stole upon the air. as again the far-off sound 
of a wheel was heard ! A whisper it was — a whisper 
from, perhaps, four miles off — secretly announcing 

25a ruin that, being foreseen, was not the less inevi- 

1 It is true that, according to the law of the case as established 
by legal precedents, all carriages were required to give way before 
royal equipages, ami therefore before the mail as one of them. 
But this only increased the danger, as being a regulation very 
imperfectly made known, v.rv unequally enforced, and therefore 
often embarrassing the movements on both sides. 

2 " Quartering" : — This is the technical word, and, I presume, 
derived from the French cartayer, to evade a rut or any obstacle. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 125 

table; that, being known, was not therefore healed. 
What could be done — who was it that could do it — 
to check the storm-flight of these maniacal horses? 
Could I not seize the reins from the grasp of the 
slumbering coachman? You, reader, think that it 5 
would have been in your power to do so. And I 
quarrel not with your estimate of yourself. But, 
from the way in which the coach man's hand was 
viced between his upper and lower thigh, this was 
impossible. Easy was it? Sec. then, that bronzelO 
equestrian statue. The cruel rider has kept the bit 
in his horse's mouth for two centuries. Unbridle 
him for a minute, if you please, and wash his mouth 
with water. Easy was it? Unhorse me, then, 
that imperial rider; knock me those marble feet 15 
from those marble stirrups of Charlemagne. 

The sounds ahead si rengthened, and were now too 
clearly the sounds of wheels. Who and what could 
it be? Was it industry in a taxed cart? Was it 
youthful gayety in a gig? Was it sorrow that 20 
loitered, or joy that raced ? For as yet the snatches 
of sound were too intermitting, from distance, to 
decipher the character of the motion. Whoever 
were the travelers, something must be done to warn 
them. Upon the other party rests the active respon- 25 
sibility, but upon us — and, woe is me ! that us was 
reduced to my frail opium-shattered self — rests the 
responsibility of warning. Yet, how should this be 
accomplished? Might I not sound the guard's 
horn? Already, on the first thought, I was making 30 
my way over the roof to the guard's seat. But this, 



126 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

from the accident which I have mentioned, of the 
foreign mails being piled upon the roof, was a diffi- 
cult and even dangerous attempt to one cramped 
by nearly three hundred miles of outside traveling. 

5 And, fortunately, before I had lost much time in the 
attempt, our frantic horses swept round an angle of 
the road which opened upon us that final Stage 
where the collision must be accomplished and the 
catastrophe scaled. All was apparently finished. 

lc The court was Bitting; tin- case was heard: the 
judge had finished; and only the verdict was yet in 
arrear. 

Before us lay an avenue straight afl an arrow, six 
hundred yards, perhaps, in length; and the umbra- 
l5geous trees, which rose in a regular line from either 
side, meeting high overhead. gave to it the character 
of a cathedra] aisle. These trees lent a deeper 
solemnity to the early light : but there was still light 
enough to perceive, at the further end of this Gothic 

20 aisle, a frail reedy gig, in which were seated a young 

man, and by his side a young lady. Ah. young sir! 
what are you about? If it is requisite that you 
should whisper your communications to this young 
lady — though really 1 see aobody, at an hour and 

25 on a road so solitary, likely to overhear you — is it 
therefore requisite that you should carry your lips 
forward to hers? The little carriage is creeping on 
at one mile an hour; and the parties within it, 
being thus tenderly entered, are naturally bending 

30 down their heads. Between them and eternity, to 
all human calculation, there is but a minute and a 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 127 

half. Oh, heavens! what is it that I shall do? 
Speaking or acting, what help can I offer? Strange 
it is, and to a mere auditor of the tale might seem 
laughable, that I should need a suggestion from the 
'* Iliad" to prompt the sole resource that remained. 5 
Yet so it was. Suddenly 1 remembered the shout 
of Achilles, and its effect. But could I pretend to 
shout like the son of Peleus, aided by Pallas? No: 
DU1 then I needed not the shout that should alarm 
all Asia militant; such a shout would suffice as 10 
might carry terror int., the hearts of two thoughtless 
young people and one gig horse. I shouted — and 
the young man heard me not. A second time I 
shouted — and now he beard me, tor now he raised 
his head. 15 

Here, then, all had been done that, by me, could 
be done; more on my part was not possible. Mine 
had been the first step; the second was for the young 
man; the third was for God. If, said I, this stran- 
ger is a brave man, and if indeed he loves the young20 
girl at his side — or, loving her not, if he feels the 
obligation, pressing upon every man worthy to be 
called a man, of doing his utmost for a woman con- 
fided to his protection — he will at least make some 
effort to save her. If that fails, he will not perish •_<.- 
the more, or by a death more cruel, for having made 
it; and he will die as a brave man should, with his 
face to the danger, and with his arm about the 
woman that he sought in vain to save. But, if 
he makes no effort, — shrinking without a struggle 30 
from his duty, — he himself will not the less certainly 



128 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

perish for this baseness of poltroonery. He will .lie 
no less: and why not? Wherefore should we grieve 
that there is one craven less in the world? No; let 
him perish, without a pitying thought of ours wasted 
5 upon him; and, in that case, all our grief will be 
reserved for the fate of the helpless girl who now, 
upon the least shadow of failure in him, must by 
the fiercest of translations — must without time for 
a prayer — must within seventy seconds — stand 

10 before the judgment seat of God. 

But craven he was not: sudden had been the call 
upon him, and sudden was his answer to the call. 
He saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that 
was coming down: already its gloomy shadow 

i.". darkened above him; and already he was measuring 
his strength to deal with it. Ah! what a vulgar 
thing does courage seem when we see nations buying 
it and selling it for a shilling a day : ah ! what a sub- 
lime thing does courage seem when some fearful 

20 summons on the great deeps of life carries a man, 
as if running before a hurricane, up to the giddy crest 
of some tumultuous crisis from which lie t wo courses, 
and a voice says to him audibly, " One way lies hope ; 
take the other, and mourn forever!" How grand 

25a triumph if, even then, amidst the raving of all 
around him, and the frenzy of the danger, the man 
is able to confront his situation — is able to retire 
for a moment into solitude with God, and to seek his 
counsel from Him ! 

30 For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the 
stranger settled his countenance steadfastly upon us, 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 129 

as if to search and value every element in the con- 
flict between him. For five seconds more of his 
seventy he sat immovably, like one that mused on 
some great purpose. For five more, perhaps, he sat 
with eyes upraised, like one that prayed in sorrow, 6 
under some extremity of doubt, for lighl that should 
guide him to the better choice. Then suddenly 
he rose; stood upright; and, by a powerful strain 
upon the reins, raising his horse's fore feet from the 
ground, lie slewed him round on the pivot of his 10 
hind legs, so as to plant the little equipage in a posi- 
tion nearly at right angles to ours. Thus far his 
condition was not improved; except as a first step 
had been taken towards the possibility of a second. 
If no more were done, nothing was done; for thelS 
little carriage still occupied the very center of our path, 
though in an altered direction. Yet even now it 
may not be too late : fifteen of the seventy seconds 
may still be unexhausted; and one almighty bound 
may avail to clear the ground. Hurry, then, hurry !20 
for the (lying moments — they hurry. Oh, hurry, 
hurry, my brave young man ! for the cruel hoofs of 
our horses — they also hurry ! Fast are the flying 
moments, faster are the hoofs of our horses. But 
fear not for him, if human energy can suffice; faith- 25 
ful was he that drove to his terrific duty; faithful 
was the horse to his command. One blow, one im- 
pulse given with voice and hand, by the stranger, 
one rush from the horse, one bound as if in the act 
of rising to a fence, landed the docile creature's 30 
fore feet upon the crown or arching center of the road. 



130 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

The larger half of the little equipage had then cleared 
our overtowering shadow: thai was evident even to 
my own agitated Bight. But it mattered little that 
one wreck should float off in safety if upon the wreck 

5 that perished were embarked the human freightage. 
The rear part of the carriage — was tlmt certainly 
beyond the line of absolute ruin ? What power eould 
answer the question? Glance of eye, thought of 
man, wing of angel, which of these had speed enough 

10 to sweep between the question and the answer, and 
divide the one from the other? Light ^^~> not tread 
upon the steps of light more mdivisibly than did our 
all-conquering arrival upon the escaping efforts of the 
gig. That must the young man have felt too plainly. 

io His hack was now turned to us; Dot by sight eould 
he any longer communicate with the peril; but, 
by the dreadful rattle of our harness, too truly had 
his ear been instructed that all was finished as re- 

garded any efforts of his. Already in resignation he 

20 had rested from his struggle; and perhaps in his 

heart he was whispering, "Father, which art in 

heaven, do Thou finish above what I on earth have 
attempted."' Faster than ever mill race we ran past 
them in our inexorable flight. Oh, raving of hurri- 

25 canes that must have sounded in their young ears 
at the moment of our transit ! Even in that mo- 
ment the thunder of collision spoke aloud. Either 
with the swingle-bar, or with the haunch of our near 
leader, we had struck the off wheel of the little gig; 

30 which stood rather obliquely, and not quite so far 
advanced as to be accurately parallel with the near 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 131 

wheel. The blow, from the fury of our passage, 
resounded terrifically. I rose in horror, to gaze 
upon the ruins we might have caused. From my 
elevated station I looked down, and looked hack 
upon the scene; which in a moment told its own 5 
tale, and wrote all its records on my heart for- 
ever. 

Here was the map of the passion that now had 
finished. The horse was planted immovably, with 
his fore feet upon the paved crest of the central road. 10 
He of the whole party might be supposed untouched 
by the passion of death. The little cany carriage 
— partly, perhaps, from the violent torsion of the 
wheels in its recent movement, partly from the 
thundering blow we had given to it —as if it sym-ifi 
pathized with human horror, was all alive with 
tremblings and shiverings. The young man trem- 
bled not, nor shivered. He sat like a rock. But his 
was the steadiness of agitation frozen into rest by 
horror. As yet he dared not look round; for he 20 
knew that, if anything remained to do, by him it 
could no longer be done. And as yet he knew not 
for certain if their safety were accomplished. But 
the lady 

But the lady ! Oh, heavens ! will that spec- 25 

tacle ever depart from my dreams, as she rose and 
sank upon her seat, sank and rose, threw up her arms 
wddly to heaven, clutched at some visionary object 
in the air, fainting, praying, raving, despairing? 
Figure to yourself, reader, the elements of the case; 30 
suffer me to recall before your mind the circum- 



132 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACB 

stances of that unparalleled situation. From the 
silence and deep peace of this saintly summer night 
— from the pathetic blending of this sweet moon- 
light, dawnlight, dreamlight — from the manly 

5 tenderness of this flattering, whispering, murmuring 
love — suddenly as from the woods and fields — 
suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening in 
revelation — suddenly as from the ground yawning 
at her feet, leaped upon her, with the flashing of 

10 cataracts, Death the crowned phantom, with all the 
equipage of his terrors, and the tiger roar of his 
voice. 

The moments were numbered; the strife was fin- 
ished; the vision was closed. In the twinkling of 

ir, an rye our flying horses had carried us to the ter- 
mination of the umbrageous aisle ; at the right angles 
we wheeled into our former direction; the turn of 
the road carried the scene out of my eyes in an 
instant, and swept it into my dreams forever. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COM II 133 



Section III — Dream-Fugue: 

FOUNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN 
DEATH 

" Whence the sound 
Of instruments that made melodious chime 
Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved 
Their stops and chords was Been ; his volant touch 
Instinct through all proportions, low and high, 5 

Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue." 

Par. Lost, Bk. XI. 

Tumultuosissimamente 

Passion of sudden dcatli ! that once in youth I read 
and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs 1 ! 

— rapture of panic taking the shape (which amongst 
tombs in churches I have seen) of woman bursting 10 
her sepulchral bonds — of woman's Ionic form b( nd- 
ing forward from the ruins of her grave with arching 
foot, with eves upraised, with clasped adoring hands 

— waiting, watching, trembling, praying for the 
trumpet's call to rise from dust forever! Ah, 15 
vision too fearful of shuddering humanity on the 
brink of almighty abysses ! — vision that didst start 
back, that didst reel away, like a shriveling scroll 
from before the wrath of fire racing on the wings of 
the wind! I^pilepsy so brief of horror, wherefore 20 
is it that thou canst not die? Passing so suddenly 

1 " Averted signs": — I read the course and changes of the 
lady's agony in the succession of her involuntary gestures; but it 
must be remembered that I read all this from the rear, never once 
catching the lady's full face, and even her profile imperfectly. 



134 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou sheddest 
thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mosaics 
of dreams? Fragment of music too passionate, 
heard once, and heard no more, what aileth thee, 
5 that thy deep rolling chords come up at intervals 
through all the worlds of sleep, and after forty years 
have lost no element of horror? 



Lo, it is summer — almighty summer ! The ever- 
lasting gates of life and summer are thrown open 

10 wide; and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as a 
savannah, the unknown lady from the dreadful 
vision and I myself are floating — she upon a fairy 
pinnace, and I upon an English three-decker. 
Both of us are wooing gales of festal happiness 

15 within the domain of our common country, within 
that ancient watery park, within the pathless chase 
of ocean, where England takes her pleasure as a 
huntress through winter and summer, from the ris- 
ing to the setting sun. Ah, what a wilderness of 

20 floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, 
upon the tropic islands through which the pinnace 
moved ! And upon her deck what a bevy of human 
flowers : young women how lovely, young men how 
noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drift - 

25ing towards us amidst music and incense, amidst 
blossoms from forests and gorgeous corymbi from 
vintages, amidst natural caroling, and the echoes 
of sweet girlish laughter. Slowly the pinnace nears 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 135 

us, gayly she hails us, and silently she disappears 
beneath the shadow of our mighty bows. But then, 
as at some signal from heaven, the music, and the 
carols, and the sweet echoing of girlish laughter — 
all are hushed. What evil has smitten the pinnace, 5 
meeting or overtaking her ? Did ruin to our friends 
couch within our own dreadful shadow? Was our 
shadow the shadow of death? I looked over the 
bow for an answer, and, behold ! the pinnace was 
dismantled; the revel and the revellers were found 10 
no more; the glory of the vintage was dust; and 
the forests with their beauty were left without a 
witness upon the seas. " But where," and I turned 
to our crew — " where are the lovely women that 
danced beneath the awning of flowers and clustering 15 
corymbi? Whither have fled the noble young men 
that danced with them?" Answer there was none. 
But suddenly the man at the mast-head, whose coun- 
tenance darkened with alarm, cried out, "Sail on 
the weather beam ! Down she comes upon us : in 20 
seventy seconds she also will founder." 



II 

I looked to the weather side, and the summer had 
departed. The sea was rocking, and shaken with 
gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, 
which grouped themselves into arches and long 25 
cathedral aisles. Down one of these, with the fiery 
pace of a quarrel from a cross bow, ran a frigate right 
athwart our course. "Are they mad?" some voice 



136 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

laimed from our dock. "Do they woo their 
ruin?" But in a moment, as Bhe was close upon us, 
some impulse of a heady current or local vortex 
gave a wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged 

5 without a shock. As she ran past us. high aloft 
amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the pinnace. 
The deeps opened ahead in malice t<» receive her, 
towerinj - of foam ran after her, the billows 

were tierce to catch her. Hut far away she was 

10 home into deserl spaces of the sea: whilst still by 

Bight I followed her. as she ran before the howling 

L r ale. chased by angry sea birds and by maddening 

billows; still I saw her. as at the moment when she 

ran past us. standing amongst the shrouds, with her 

us white draperies streaming before the wind. There 

she Stood, with hair disheveled, one hand clutched 

amongst the tackling — rising, sinking, fluttering, 
trembling, praying; there for leagues I saw her as 

she stood, raising at intervals one hand to heaven, 
:m amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing waves and the 

raving of the storm ; until at last, upon a sound from 
afar of malicious laughter and mockery, all was 
hidden forever in driving showers; and afterwards, 
but when 1 knew not, nor how, 



III 

28 Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable dis- 
tance, wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, 
awakened me as I slept in a boat moored to some 
familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 137 

breaking; and, by the dusky revelations which it 

spread, I saw a girl, adorned with a garland of white 
g about her head for Borne greal festival, run- 
ning along the solitary strand in extremity of haste. 

Ih-r running was the running of panic; and often 5 

she looked hack as to some dreadful enemy in the 
rear. But, when I leaped ashore and followed on 
her steps to warn her of a peril in front, alas! from 
me she tied as from another peril, and vainly 1 
Bhouted to her of quicksands that lay ahead. Faster to 
and faster Bhe ran; round a promontory of rocks 
she wheeled oiit of Bight ; in an instant I also wheeled 

round it. hut only to Bee the treacherous sands gath- 
ering above her head. Already her person was 
buried; only the fair young head and the diadem 15 
of white roses around it were still visible to the pity- 
ing heavens; and. last of all. was visible one white 
marble arm. I saw by the early twilight this fair 

young head, as it was Binking down to darkness — 
saw this marble arm. as it rose above her head andi'O 
her treacherous grave, tossing, faltering, rising, 

clutching, as at some false deceiving hand stretched 

out from the clouds — saw this marble arm uttering 
her dying hope, and then uttering her dying despair. 
The head, the diadem, the arm — these all had sunk; 25 
at last over these also the cruel quicksand had closed; 
and no memorial of the fair young girl remained on 
earth, except my own solitary tears, and the funeral 
bells from the desert seas, that, rising again more 
Boftly, Bang a requiem over the grave of the buried 30 
child, and over her blighted dawn. 



138 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have 
ever given to the memory of those that died before 
the dawn, an«l by the treachery of earth, our mother. 

Hut suddenly the tear- and funeral hells were hushed 
5 by a shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from 
some greal king's artillery, advancing rapidly along 
the valleys, and heard afar by echoes from the moun- 
tains. "Hush!" I said, as I bent my ear earth- 
wards to listen — "hush! — this either is the very 
10 anarchy of strife, or else" — and then I listened 
more profoundly, and whispered as 1 raised my head 
— "or else, oh, heavens! it is victory that is final, 

victory that swallows up all strife." 



IV 

Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land 

15 and sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon 

a triumphal ear, amongst companions crowned 
with laurel. The darkness of gathering midnight, 
brooding over all the land, hid from us the mighty 
crowds that were weaving restlessly about ourselves 
•jo as a center: we heard them, but saw then. not. 
Tidings had arrived, within an hour, of a grandeur 
that measured itself against centuries; too full of 

pathos they were, too full of joy, to utter them- 
selves by other latiL r uaL r e than by tears, by restless 

25 anthems, and Tt l)>um* reverberated from the 
choirs and orchestras of earth. These tidings we 
that sat upon the laureled ear had it for our privi- 
lege to publish amongst all nations. And already, 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 139 

by Bigns audible through the darkness, by snortings 
and tramplings, our angry horses, thai knew no 
fear or fleshly weariness, upbraided us with delay. 
Wherefore was it that we delayed? We waited 

for a secret word, that should bear witness to the 5 
hope of nations as now accomplished forever. At 
midnight the secret word arrived; which word was 
— Waterloo <in<l l!<c<>r< red t 'hrisU ndom ! The dread- 
ful word shone by its own light ; before us it went ; 
high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread t<» 
a golden light over the paths which we traversed. 
Every city, at the presence of the secret word, threw 
open its gates. The rivers were conscious as we 
crossed. All the forests, as we ran along their 
margins, shivered in homage to the secret word. 15 
And the darkness comprehended it. 

Two hours after midnight we approached a mighty 
Minster. I'- gates, which rose to the clouds, were 
closed. But, when the dreadful word that rode 
before us reached them with its golden light, silently 20 
they moved back upon their hinges, and at a flying 
gallop our equipage entered the grand aisle of the 
cathedral. Headlong was our pace; and at every 
altar, in the little chapels and oratories to the right 
hand and left of our course, the lamps, dying or 25 
sickening, kindled anew in sympathy with the secret 
word that was flying past. Forty leagues we might 
have run in the cathedral, and as yet no strength 
of morning light had reached us, when before us 
we saw the aerial galleries of organ and choir. 30 
Every pinnacle of fretwork, every station of advan- 



140 THE ENGLISH MAIL CO Ac II 

tage amongst the traceries, was crested by white- 
robed choristers that sang deliverance ; that wept 
no more tears, as once their fathers had wept ; but 
at intervals that sang together to the generations, 
5 saying, 

" Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue," 
and receiving answers from afar, 

"Such as once in heaven and earth were sung." 

And of their chanting was no end; of our head- 
10 long pace was neither pause nor Blackening. 

Thus as we ran Like torrents — thus as we swept 
with bridal rapture over the Campo Santo * of the 
cathedral graves — suddenly we became aware of 
a vast necropolis rising upon the far-off horizon — 
15a city of sepulchers, built within the Baintly cathe- 
dral for the warrior dead that rested from their feuds 
on earth. Of purple granite was the necropolis; 
yet, in the first minute, it lay like a purple stain upon 
the horizon, so mighty was the distance. In the 
2osecond minute it trembled through many chants 

i"Campo Santo": — It is probable that most of my readers 
will bf acquainted with the history ol tin- Campo Santo (or ceme- 
tery) at Pisa, composed of earth brought from Jerusalem for a 
bed <>f sanctity, as the highesl prize which the ooble piety <>i cru- 
saders could a->k or imagine. To readers who art- unacquainted 
with England, or who (being English) are yet unacquainted with 
the cathedra] cities of England, it may be righl to mention that 

the graves within-side the cathedrals often form a flat pavement 
over which carriages and horses might run ; and perhaps a boyish 
remembrance of one particular cathedral, across which I had seen 

passengers walk and burdens carried, as about two centuries back 
they were through the middle of St. Paul's in London, may have 
assisted my dream. 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 141 

growing into terraces and towers of wondrous 
altitude, so mighty was the pace. In the third 
minute already, with our dreadful gallop, we were 
entering its suburbs. Vast sarcophagi rose on every 
side, having towers and turrets that, upon the 5 
limits of the central aisle, strode forward with 
haughty intrusion, that ran back with mighty 
shadows into answering recesses. Every sarcopha- 
gus showed many bas-reliefs — bas-reliefs of battles 
and of battlefields; battles from forgotten ages, 10 
battles from yesterday; battlefields that, long 
since, nature had healed and reconciled to herself 
with the sweet oblivion of flowers; battlefields that 
were yet angry and crimson with carnage. Where 
the terraces ran, there did we run ; where the towers 15 
curved, there did we curve. With the flight of 
swallows our horses swept round every angle. 
bike rivers in flood wheeling round headlands, 
like hurricanes that ride into the secrets of forests, 
faster than ever light unwove the mazes of darkness, 20 
our flying equipage carried earthly passions, kindled 
warrior instincts, amongst the dust that lay around 
us — dust oftentimes of our noble fathers that had 
slept in God from Crecy to Trafalgar. And now 
had we reached the last sarcophagus, now were we 25 
abreast of the last bas-relief, already had we recov- 
ered the arrow-like flight of the illimitable central 
aisle, when coming up this aisle to meet us we 
beheld afar off a female child, that rode in a carriage 
as frail as flowers. The mists which went before 30 
her hid the fawns that drew her, but could not hide 



142 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

the shells and tropic flowers with which she played — 
but could not hide the lovely smiles by which she 
uttered her trust in the mighty cathedral, and in 
the cherubim that looked down upon her from the 

5 mighty shafts of its pillars. Face to face she was 
meeting us; face to face she rode, as if danger there 
were none. "Oh, baby!" I exclaimed, " shalt 
thou be the ransom for Waterloo? Must we, that 
carry tidings of great joy to every people, be mes- 

lOsengers of ruin to the In horror I rose at the 

thought; but then, also, in horror at the thought 
rose one that was sculptured on a bas-relief — a 
Dying Trumpeter. Solemnly from the field of 
battle he rose to his feel ; and. iinslinging his stony 

15 trumpet, carried it, in his dying anguish, to his 
stony lips — Bounding once, and yet once again; 
proclamation that, in thy ears, oh. baby! spoke 
from the battlements of death. Immediately deep 
shadows fell between us, and aboriginal silence. 

2oThe choir had ceased to sing. The hoofs of our 
horses, the dreadful rattle of our harness, the groan- 
ing of our wheels, alarmed the graves no more. By 
horror the bas-relief had been unlocked unto life. 
By horror we, that were so full of life, we men and 

25 our horses, with their fiery fore legs rising in mid 
air to their everlasting gallop, were frozen to a bas- 
relief. Then a third time the trumpet sounded; 
the seals were taken off all pulses; life, and the 
frenzy of life, tore into their channels again; again 

ao the choir burst forth in sunny grandeur, as from 
the muffling of storms and darkness; again the thun- 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 143 

derings of our horses carried temptation into the 
graves. One cry burst from our lips, as the clouds, 
drawing off from the aisle, showed it empty before 
us< _ " Whither has the infant fled ? — is the young 
child caught up to Clod?" Lo! afar off, in a vast 5 
recess, rose three mighty windows to the clouds; 
and on a level with their summits, at height insu- 
perable to man, rose an altar of purest alabaster. 
On its eastern face was trembling a crimson glory. 
A glory was it from the reddening dawn that nowio 

amed through the windows? Was it from the 
crimson robes of the martyrs painted on the windows? 
Was it from the bloody bas-reliefs of earth? There, 
suddenly, within that crimson radiance, rose the 
apparition of a woman's head, and then of a woman'sl5 
figure. The child it was — grown up to woman's 
height. Clinging to the horns of the altar, voice- 
less she stood — sinking, rising, raving, despairing; 
and behind the volume of incense that, night and 
day. streamed upwards from the altar, dimly was 20 
seen the fiery font, and the shadow of that dreadful 
being who should have baptized her with the bap- 
tism of death. But by her side was kneeling her 
better angel, that hid his face with wings; that 
wept and pleaded for her; that prayed when she 25 
could not; that fought with Heaven by tears for 
her deliverance; which also, as he raised his im- 
mortal countenance from his wings, I saw, by the 
glory in his eye, that from Heaven he had won at 
last. 3° 



144 THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 



Then was completed the passion of the mighty 
fugue. The golden tubes of the organ, which as 
yet had but muttered at intervals — gleaming 
amongst clouds and surges of incense — threw up, 

5 as from fountains unfathomable, columns of heart- 
shattering music. Choir and antechoir were Oiling 
fast with unknown voices. Thou also, Dying 
Trumpeter, with thy love that was victorious, and 
thy anguish thai was finishing, didsi enter the 

10 tumult; trumpet and echo — farewell love, and 
farewell anguish — rang through the dreadful 
sanctua. Oh, darkness of the gravel that from 
the crimson altar and from the fiery font werl visited 
and searched by the effulgence in the angel's eye — 

IB were these indeed thy children? Pomps of life, 
that, from the burials of centuries, rose again to 
the voice of perfect joy, did ye indeed mingle with 
the festivals of Death? Lo! as I looked back for 
Beventy leagues through the mighty cathedral, 

20 1 saw the quick and the dead that Bang together 
to God, together that sang to the generations of 
man. All the hosts of jubilation, like armies that 
ride in pursuit, moved with one step. Us, that. 
with laureled heads, were passing from the cathe- 

25dral, they overtook, and. as with a garment, they 
wrapped us round with thunders greater than our 
own. As brothers we moved together ; to the 
dawn that advanced, to the stars that fled; render- 
ing thanks to God in the highest — that, having 



THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 145 

hid his face through one generation behind thick 
clouds of War, once again was ascending, from the 
Campo Santo of Waterloo was ascending, in the 
visions of Peace; rendering thanks for thee, young 
girl ! whom having overshadowed with His ineffable 5 
passion of death, suddenly did God relent, suffered 
thy angel to turn aside His arm. and even in thee, 
sister unknown! shown to me for a moment only 
to be hidden forever, found an occasion to glorify 
His goodness. A thousand times, amongst theio 
phantoms of Bleep, have 1 seen thee entering the 
gates of the golden dawn, with the secret word 
riding before thee, with the armies of the grave 
behind thee. — scon thee Binking, rising, raving, 
despairing; a thousand times in the worlds of sleep i.~, 

have I seen thee followed by <iod's angel through 
storms, through desert seas, through the darkness 
of quicksands, through dreams and the dreadful 
elations that are in dreams; oidy that at 
the last, with one sling of His victorious arm, He 20 
might snatch thee back from ruin, and might em- 
blazon in thy deliverance the endless resurrections 
of His love ! 



LEVANA AND OUB LADIES OF SORROW 

Oftentimes al Oxford I saw Levana in my 

dreams. I knew her by her Roman symbols. Who 
is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to have 
leisure for very much scholarship, you will not be 

5 angry with mo for telling you. Levana was the 
Roman goddess that performed for the newborn 
infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness, 
— typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which 
belongs to man everywhere, and of that benignity 

min powers invisible which even in Pagan worlds 
sometimes descends t<> Bustain it. At the very 
moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for the 
first time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, 
it was laid on the ground. Thai might hear dif- 

lsferent interpretations. But immediately, lest so 
grand a creature should grovel there for more than 
one instant, either the paternal hand, as proxy for 

the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman, as 
proxy for the father, raised it upright, hade ii look 
2oerect as the king of all this world, and presented 
its forehead to the star-, saying, perhaps, in his 
heart. "Behold what i- greater than yourselvi 
This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. 
And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her 

26 face (except to mo in dreams), hut always acted 

1 1»; 



LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 147 

by delegation, had her name from the Latin verb 
(as still it is the Italian verb) levare, to raise aloft. 
This is the explanation of Levana. And hence 
it has arisen that some people have understood by 
Levana the tutelary power that controls the edn- 5 
cation of the QUTsery. She, that wonld not suffer 
at his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degrada- 
tion for her awful ward, far less could be supposed 
to suffer the real degradation attaching to the non- 
development of his powers. She therefore watchesio 
over human education. Now, the word (duco, 
with the penultimate short, was derived (by a pro- 
often exemplified in the crystallization of 
Languages) from the word educo, with the penulti- 
mate long. Whatsoever <<///<■<*, or develops, eda-is 
<-<it<s. By the education of Levana, therefore, is 
meant, — not the poor machinery that moves by 
Spelling books and grammars, but by that mighty 
system of central forces hidden in the deep bosom 
of human life, which by passion, by strife, by temp- 20 
tat ion, by the energies of resistance, works forever 
upon children, — resting not day or night, any 
more than the mighty wheel of day and night 
themselves, whose moments, like restless spokes, 
are glimmering 1 forever as they revolve. 25 

1 As I have never allowed myself to covet any man's ox nor his 
nor anything thai is his, still Less would it become a philoso- 
pher to eovel other people's imagea or metaphors. Here, there- 
fore, I restore to .Mr. Wordsworth this fine image of the revolving 
wheel, and the glimmering si><>kf>. as applied by him to the flying 
successions of day and night. I borrowed it for one moment in 
order to point my own sentence ; which being done, the reader is 
witness that I now pay it back instantly by a note made for that 



148 LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW' 

If, then, these arc the ministries by which Levana 
works, how profoundly must she reverence the 

encies of grief! But you. reader I think, — 
that children generally arc not liable to ^rief such 
mine. There are two senses in the word gen- 
erally, — tin 1 sense of Euclid, where it means 
universally for in the whole extent of the genus), 
and a foolish Bense of this world, where it means 
usually. Now, I am far from Baying that children 
10 universally are capable of grief like mine. But 

there are more than you ever ln-ard of who die of 
grief in this island of ours. I will tell you a com- 
mon case. The rules of EtoD require that a boy 
on the foundation should he there twelve years: 
i.-i he is superannuated at eighteen, consequently he 
must come at six. Children torn away from mothers 
and sisters at that age not unfrequently die. 1 

speak of what I know. The complaint is not ente',. ,1 

by the registrar a- grief; hut that it Is. Grief of 

•jn that sort, and at that age, has killed more than 

ever have been counted amongst its martyrs. 

Therefore it is that Levana often communes with 
the powers that shake man's heart: therefore it 18 

that she dotes upon grief. "These ladies/' said I 
26 softly to myself, on seeing the ministers with whom 
Levana was conversing, "these are the Son < 

s«>li- purpose. I >ii the same principle T often borrow their Beak 
from young ladies, when closing my letters, because there ui inre to 
be some tender sentimenl upon them about " memory," <>r " hope," 
or "roses," or "reunion," and my correspondent must be ;i sad 

brute who is not touched by the eloquence of the seal, even if his 
taste i> bo bad that he remains deal to mine. 



LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 149 

and they are three in Dumber; as the Graces are 
three, who dress man's life with beauty: the Parccc 
are three who weave the dark arras of man's life 
in their mysterious loom always with colors sad 
in part, sometime- angry with tragic crimson and 5 
Mack; the Furies are three, who visit with retribu- 
tions called from the other side of the grave offenses 
that walk upon this; and once even the Muses 
were but three, who lit the harp, the trumpet, or 
the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned io 
creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom 
I know." The last words I say now; but in Oxford 
I said, "one of whom I know, and the others too 
surely 1 shall know." For already, in my fervent 
youth. I saw (dimly relieved upon the dark back-ic 
ground <>f my dreams) the imperfecl lineaments of 
the awful sisters. These sisters — by what names 
shall we call t hem '.' 

If I say simply "The Sorrow-." there will be 
a chance of mistaking the term; it might be under-'jo 
stood of individual sorrow — separate cases of 
Borrow, — whereas I want a term expressing the 
mighty abstractions that incarnate themselves in 
all individual sufferings of man's heart ; and I wish 
to have these abstractions presented as impersona-25 
tions, that is, as clothed with human attributes of 
life, and with functions pointing to flesh. Let us 
call them therefore, Our Ladies of Sorrow. I know 
them thoroughly, and have walked in all their 
kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of one mysteri-30 
ous household; and their paths are wide apart; 



150 LEV AN A AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 

but of their dominion there is no end. Them I 
saw often conversing with Levana, and sometimes 
about myself. Do they talk, then ? O, no ! 
Mighty phantoms like these disdain the infirmities 
5 of language. They may utter voices through the 
organs of man when they dwell in human hearts, 
but amongst themselves is no voice nor sound; 
eternal silence reigns in their kingdoms. They 
spoke not, as they talked with Levana; they whis- 

lopered not; they sang not; though oftentimes me- 
thought they might have sung: for I upon earth 
had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered 
by harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. Like 
God, whose servants they are, they utter their 

15 pleasure not by sounds that perish, or by words that 
go astray, but by signs in heaven, by changes on 
earth, by pulses in secret rivers, heraldries painted 
on darkness, and hieroglyphics written on the tablets 
of the brain. They wheeled in mazes; / spelled 

20 the steps. They telegraphed from afar; I read the 
signals. They conspired together; and on the mir- 
rors of darkness my eye traced the plots. Theirs 
were the symbols; mine are the words. 

What is it the sisters are ? What is it that they 

25 do ? Let me describe their form and their presence, 
if form it were that still fluctuated in its outline, 
or presence it were that forever advanced to the 
front or forever receded amongst shades. 

The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachry- 

30 marum, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night 
and day raves and moans, calling for vanished 



LEVAXA AXD OUR LADIES OF SORROW 151 

faces. She stood in Rama where a voice was heard 
of lamentation — Rachel weeping for her children, 
and refused to be comforted. She it was that stood 
in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword 
swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the little feet 5 
were stiffened forever, which, heard at times as 
they tottered along floors overhead, woke pulses 
of love in household hearts that were not unmarked 
in heaven. 

Her eyes are sweet and subtile, wild and sleepy 10 
by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, often- 
times challenging the heavens. She wears a dia- 
dem round her head. And I knew by childish 
memories that she could go abroad upon the winds 
when she heard that sobbing of litanies or thei5 
thundering of organs, and when she beheld the 
mustering of summer clouds. This sister, the elder, 
it is that carries keys more than papal at her girdle, 
which open every cottage and every palace. She, 
to my knowledge, sat all last summer by the bed- 20 
side of the blind beggar, him that so often and so 
gladly I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight 
years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the 
temptations of play and village mirth to travel all 
day long on dusty roads with her afflicted father. 25 
For this did God send her a great reward. In the 
springtime of the year, and whilst yet her own 
spring was budding, he recalled her to himself. 
But her blind father mourns forever over her; 
still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding 30 
hand is locked within his own; and still he wakens 



152 LEV AN A AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 

to a darkness that is now within a second and a 
deeper darkness. This Mater Lachrymarum also 
has been sitting all this winter of 1844-5 within 
the bedchamber of the Czar, bringing before his 
5 eyes a daughter (not less pious) that vanished to 
God not less suddenly, and left behind her a dark- 
ness not less profound. By the power of her keys 
it is that Our Lady of Tears glides a ghostly intruder 
into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless women, 

10 sleepless children, from Ganges to the Nile, from 
Nile to Mississippi. And her, because she is the 
firstborn of her house, and has the widest empire, 
let us honor with the title of "Madonna." 

The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum, 

15 Our Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, 
nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no 
diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen, 
would be neither sweet nor subtile; no man could 
read their story; they would be found filled with 

20 perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten 
delirium. But she raises not her eyes; her head, 
on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops forever, 
forever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She 
groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. 

25 Her sister Madonna is oftentimes stormy and frantic, 
raging in the highest against heaven, and demand- 
ing back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs 
never clamors, never defies, dreams not of rebellious 
aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers 

30 is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Mur- 
mur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she 



LEV AN A AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 153 

may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter 
she does at times, but it is in solitary places that 
are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and 
when the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister 
is the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bonds- 5 
man to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys; of 
the English criminal in Norfolk Island, blotted 
out from the books of remembrance in sweet far-off 
England; of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes 
forever upon a solitary grave, which to him seems 10 
the altar overthrown of some past and bloody 
sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can now be 
availing, whether towards pardon that he might 
implore, or towards reparation that he might at- 
tempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to 15 
the tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points 
with one hand to the earth, our general mother, 
but for him a stepmother, — as he points with the 
other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, but 
against him sealed and sequestered ; l every woman 20 
sitting in darkness, without love to shelter her head, 
or hope to illuminate her solitude, because the 
heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs 
of holy affections, which God implanted in her 
womanly bosom, having been stifled by social 25 
necessities, now burn sullenly to waste, like sepul- 
chral lamps amongst the ancients; every nun de- 

1 This, the reader will be aware, applies chiefly to the cotton 
and tobacco states of North America; but not to them only : on 
which account I have not scrupled to figure the sun which looks 
down upon slavery as tropical — no matter if strictly within the 
tropics, or simply so near to them as to produce a similar climate, 



154 LEV AN A AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 

frauded of her unreturning May time by wicked 
kinsmen, whom God will judge; every captive 
in every dungeon; all that are betrayed, and all 
that are rejected; outcasts by traditionary law, 

sand children of hereditary disgrace, — all these walk 
with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key; 
but she needs it little, for her kingdom is chiefly 
amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless 
vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest 

10 ranks of man she finds chapels of her own; and 
even in glorious England there are some that, to 
the world, carry their heads as proudly as the rein- 
deer, who yet secretly have received her mark upon 
their foreheads. 

15 But the third sister, who is also the youngest — 
Hush! whisper whilst we talk of her! Her king- 
dom is not large, or else no flesh should live; but 
within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, 
turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost beyond 

20 the reach of sight. She droops not ; and her eyes 
rising so high might be hidden by distance. But, 
being what they are, t hey cannot be hidden; through 
the treble veil of crape which she wears, the fierce 
light of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins 

25 or for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night, for 
ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the 
very ground. She is the defier of God. She also 
is the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of 
suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power; but 

30 narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can 
approach only those in whom a profound nature 



LEV AN A AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 155 

has been upheaved by central convulsions; in 
whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under 
conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest 
from within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps, 
fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady 5 
of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this 
youngest sister moves with incalculable motions, 
bounding, and with a tiger's leaps. She carries 
no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, 
she storms all doors at which she is permitted toio 
enter at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum, 
Our Lady of Darkness. 

These were the Semnai Theai, or Sublime God- 
desses, 1 these were the Eumenides, or Gracious 
Ladies (so called by antiquity in shuddering pro- 15 
pitiation), of my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. 
She spoke by her mysterious hand. Touching my 
head, she beckoned to Our Lady of Sighs; and 
what she spoke, translated out of the signs which 
(except in dreams) no man reads, was this: 20 

" Lo ! here is he whom in childhood I dedicated 
to my altars. This is he that once I made my 
darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and 
from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. 
Through rne did he become idolatrous ; and through 25 
me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshiped 
the worm and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy 

1 "Sublime goddesses": The word <t€/jlvos is usually rendered ven- 
erable, in dictionaries, — not a very flattering epithet for females. 
But hy weighing a number of passages in which the word is used 
pointedly, I am disposed to think that it comes nearest to our idea 
of the sublime — as near as a Greek word could come. 



156 LEV AN A AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 

was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; 
saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolator, 
I have seasoned for thee, dear, gentle Sister of Sighs ! 
Do thou take him now to thy heart, and season him 

:, for our dreadful sister. And thou." turning to the 
Mater Tenebrarumj she said, "wicked sister, that, 
temptest and hatest, do thou take him from h<r. 
See that thy scepter lie heavy on his head. Suffer 
not woman and her tenderness to .-it near him in 

10 his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope, wither 
the relenting of love, scorch the fountains of tears, 
curse him as only thou canst CUTS< 8 -hall he 
be accomplished in the furnace, so shall he see the 
things that ought not to be seen, sights that are 

L5 abominable, and secrets that are unutterable, 
shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, 
fearful truths. So -hall he rise again before he dies. 
And so shall our commission be accomplished which 
from God we had — to plague his heart until we 

20 had unfolded the capacities of his spirit." 






NOTES 

JOAN OF ARC 

Introductory Note. This essay was first published in 1847, 
in Tail's Edinburgh Magazine, in the March and August num- 
bers. In the intervening numbers several other articles by De 
Quincey appeared, among them The Nautico-Military Nun of 
Spain. Many changes were made in the essay when it was 
revised for the Collective Edition of L854, the changes being 
mainly in the excision of irrelevant matter that often ran into 
unmitigated nonsense. De Quincey once remarked autobio- 
graphically, " Both Lamb and myself had a furious love for 
nonsense — head-long nonsense." Even after a scrupulous 
revision, the essays in this volume amply justify this remark, as 
far as it applies to De Quincey himself. Borne of his changes 
are described in the notes, to illustrate his self-criticism. 

De Quincey was the first writer to present, in an imagina- 
tive way, a sane and true picture of Joan of Arc, and the 
sympathetic interest in the subject induced by the essay has 
somewhat obscured its artistic defects. "The paper," says 
R. Brimley Johnson, " is almost perfect." Nearer to the truth 
is Masson's critical summary : " It is the passages of fine lyrical 
prose at the opening and the close of the paper that chiefly 
recommend it now and cause it to be remembered as De Quin- 
cey's. A good deal of the intermediate matter (of facetious 
disputation with M. Michelet, and what not) may seem un- 
pleasantly out of key." 

Some standard historical account of Joan of Arc, should be 
read in connection with the study of this essay. Michelet's 
account may be read in the translations by G. H. Smith and 
Walter K. Kelley of the Histoi'y of France, Book X, Chap- 

157 



158 NOTES 

ters 3 and 4. Kitchin's History of France may also be used, 
Mrs. Oliphant'a Jeanne D'Arc, F. C. Lowell's Joan of Arc, and 
Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles. Much interest will be added 
by comparing the imaginative treatmenl of the subject in 
Southey's Joan of Arc, Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans, and 
Voltaire's La Pucelle, all of which, however, like Shakspere's 
//< nry VI. present very inadequate conceptions of the character 
of the noble heroine. Interest and profit will be found in Mark 
Twain's (Samuel L. Clemens) Joan of Arc. 

De Quincey's original footnotes have been retained with the 
text in this volume of selections, just as the author left them in 
his revised edition. 

22 : 4. By an act. See 1 Samuel xvii. 

10. From a station of good will. From a friendly point of 
view. The word st>i(in t ) here appears to be used in the sur- 
veyor's sense, "the place selected for planting the instrument 
with which an observation is to be made." — Cent»r>i !>;<■- 
tionary. 

17. Scepter was departing from Judah. Cf. Genesis xlix. 10. 

20. Sang together with the songs. A peculiar expr- 
probably an echo of scriptural phrases, as in Isaiah lii. '.», and 
Job xxxviii. 7. 

21. Domremy. More generally called Domrgmy-la-Pucelle, 
in honor of Joan of Arc. The house in which she was born is 
preserved as a national relic. Near it is a handsome monument 
with a colossal statue of the heroine. A chapel has also been 
built to her memory. 

23 : (J. Apparitors. The summoners, or attendants upon the 
officers of an ecclesiastical court. 

7. En contumace. In contumacy, contempt of court; a 
French legal term denoting the position of one who, when sum- 
moned to answer charges before the court, does not appear. 

8. As yet may happen. Already "universal France" has 
practically accepted .loan of Arc as a national heroine. Her 
fame could hardly be more exalted, unless she were canonized 
by the Church ; this, however, is not probable with the present 
condition of the Church in France. Her sentence was revoked 
by decree of the Pope in 1456, and since then the genuineness of 
her inspiration has been accepted by Roman Catholic writers 



NOTES 159 

26. Rouen. A city on the Seine in Normandy, where Joan 
wis martyred. 

24 : 10. Lilies of France. The lily, or fleur-de-lis (flower of 
the lily), is .said to have been the royal emblem of France from 
the time of Clovis. The Revolution of 178t>-17*.>:» caused the 
royal lily to "wither," when Louis XVI was beheaded, and the 
people for a time ruled the kingdom. 

18. But stay. The original article in TaiVs Magazine has, 
11 But Btop." 

25. Jules Michelet [meesh-la 7 ] (1798-1874). A French his- 
torian, professor of history in tli.-c-li.--v of France. His prin- 
cipal works are History of France, History of the French 
Revolution, Women of the Revolution, and Beveral books of a 
poetical and speculative character, such as Tin Bird, The In- 
sect, The fifea, and Woman. His writings are especially remark- 
able for their brilliancy of style. Upon the preparation of his 
chief wmk. the History of France, he is said to have spent 
forty years. An available translation of this work is that of 
G. II. Smith. 2 vols. 

27. '• As mad as a March hare," is a very old saying. In the 
month of March hares are unusually wild and excitable. 

28. Recovered liberty. An allusion, apparently, to the minor 
revolution of 1830, by which the restored Bourbons were ex- 
pelled. Their mighty r< volution is, of course, the great one of 
ITS-.) and Napoleon. The one to the other is as laughing-gas to 
voim . 

25 : 11. His worst book. A translation of the work, Priests, 
Women, and Families, had been published in London the y< ar 
before. After the next sentence De Quincey originally added, 
•• M. .Michelet was light-headed, I believe, when he wrote it, 
and it is well that his keepers overtook him in time to intercept 
a second part." 

18. Falconer's lure. A decoy used to recall the hawk to 
his perch on the fist ; sometimes an artificial bird, with meat 
attached, which strongly attracts the hawk when it is swung in 
the air by the falconer, with a peculiar whistle or call. 

26 : 3. Chevy Chase. De Quincey parodies the opening lines 
of the old ballad of Chevy Chose, not of the familiar version in 
l'i rcy's Reliques, but of the "enfeebled edition" current in the 



160 NOTES 

printed broadsides of the seventeenth century. This is given 
in the Child Collection, and in the abridged edition, English 
and Scottish Popular Ballads {Cambridge Edition), p. 397. 

" The stout Erie of Northumberland 
a vow to <;<>.i <li'l make 
His pleasure in the Scottish woods 
three Bommers days to take." 

15. Asbestos. A form of hornblende consisting of fine 
crystalline fibers, with a silky luster, which may be woven into 
cloth. It is said that the ancients wrapped the bodies of their 
dead iii asbestos cloth, to keep their ashes Beparate from those 
of the funeral pile. Charlemagne, says legend, was wont to 
astonish his guests by throwing 1. - tablecloth into the 

ter dinner. 

26. La Pucelle. '-The Maid." or -'The Virgin" ; the com- 
mon French designation for. loan of Arc, called Maid of Orleans 
because I Orleans was the scene of her first great victory over the 
English, 

30. Collection now forthcoming. The reference is t<> Quiche- 
rat's Proces a\ Condemnation <? d\ Rehabilitation a\ Jeanm 
<r.\rr. .", vols., L 84 1-184 I irray's .J<-inn> D' Ai>\ New 

York. 1902. 

27 : 16. Hannibal. The famous Carthaginian general, who 
when nine years old was made by his father. Elamilcar, to 
swear eternal enmity to Rome. In lM7 b.c. he Led a Fast army 
across the Alps, and for a time threatened the empire with total 
destruction. In 183 b.c he took poison to escape falling into 
the hands of his old enemies. 

1»'». Mithridates. A Ferocious king of Pontus, who for many 
years waged war against the Romans. In the lasl war against 
Pompey, 66 b.c, his son Pharnaces having rebelled, Mithri- 
dates, after attempting ineffectually to poison himself, ordered 
C'ln of his Gallic mercenaries to dispatch him with his sword. 

23. Delenda est Anglia Victrix. " Victorious England must 
be destroyed : " suggested by the famous words with which the 
elder Cato is said to have ended all his speeches, "Delenda est 
Carthago." 



NOTES 1G1 

28. Hyder Ali. One of the most powerful princes of India, 
Sultan of tlic state of Mysore. The defeat and death of his son 
Tippoo Sahib occurred in 1799. 

28 : 10. Suffren. A French admiral, who in 1780 captured 
twelve merchant-ships from the British, and in 1781 defeated 
the British commodore Johnstone. In the original article in 
Tait'a the name is spelled Suffrein. 

10. Magnanimous justice of Englishmen. De Quincey could 
not have had Shakspere's / Henry VI in mind when writing 
this line. Fuller, in his Holy and Pro/am State, included Joan 
of Arc among the examples of the "Profane State.' 1 Admit- 
ting thai the greal doctors disagreed as to some of her acts, he 
gives two tacts that for himself are quite conclusive, namely, 
" going in man's clothes, flatly againsl scripture," and "shaved 
her hair in the fashiOD of a friar, against GrOd's express word." 

29 : 1. Marches. An old French word for the border or 
frontier of a country. Ct p. "><'>, 1. 25. See map of France 
in the fifteenth century. 

18. The cis and the trans. Latin on this side and on the 
oik* r tide. 

29. St. Andrew's Cross. Called in Latin crux deeuasata, 
decussate cross. Upon a cross of this form St. Andrew, the 
apostle, is supposed to have been crucified. 

30 : 13. Odious man. Later in the essay De Quincey ex- 
plains his '-systematic hatred of D'Arc," p. 39. 

31: 1. Crecy (Eng., Oessy). This famous battle was fought in 
1346 between the English under Edward III and the Black Prince 
and the French under Philip VI ; 1200 knights, the flower of 
French chivalry, and 30,000 footmen were slain. It marks the 
downfall of feudalism. The knights on horseback in glittering 
armor, in spite of their traditional prowess, could not cope with 
the English foot-soldiers, mere yeomen, armed with the bow. 

2. Agincourt [aj'in-kort]. This victory was won by Henry V 
in 1415. The French lost 10,000 men, including many princes 
and nobles. 

Nicopolis. The allied armies of Hungary, Poland, and 
France, under King Sigismund, were signally defeated at this 
place in 1396 by the Sultan Bajazet. 

32 : 8. Poictiers (or Poitiers) [poi-terz']. Here in 1356 Ed- 



L62 N0TE8 

ward the Black Prince, with 8000 men, defeat '1 a French army 
of atom 50,000 men, and captured the king, John the 1 1 

Withering overthrow.- u »n thai England 

Learned at Bannockburn she taught the world a( The 

whole social and political fabric of the Middle Ages rested 
i military iddenly withdrawn. 

The churl ha<l struck down the coble ; the bondsman pi 
more than a match in sheer hard fighting tor the knight Prom 
the day of Creasy feudalism tottered slowly but surely to Its 
Green's ^4 Short History of ti„ Englis) P 

18. The poor king. Charles vi reigned nominally from 1880 
i" L422. Be became di I the rivalry of his 

uncles, who seized the reins m< at, broughl on civil 

war. Benry N ind, taking advantage of the int. 

troubles, invaded Prance, won th< \ acourt, an 

cured ;i treaty which stipulated that he should become ki 
France mi the death ol . thus depriving his son, the 

dauphin, of his rightful inheritance. 

33:1. Some ancient prophetic doom. As presented, for 
pie, in the great Greek b was the legend of 

CEdipus, used by S< »phoc 

The famines, the extraordinary diseases. Thei Ible 

famines in France and England in the first halt" ol the four- 
teenth century. Bui more terrible was the mysterious dis- 
alled the "Black Death." which swept over all Em 

during the .same century, it appeared in Provence in the south 
ol France, in 1347, and destroyed two thirds of the Inhabitants 
of that province I Issart records the event laconically : U A1 
this time there prevailed throughout the world a disease called 
epidemy, which destroyed a third o! its inhabitant 

•i. Insurrections of the peasantry. Such as the rising of the 
lants in France in 1368, known as the insurrection <d the 
Jacquerie, and Wat Tyler'a rebellion in England in 1881. 

6. Termination of the Crusades. The ninth and last crusade 
was undertaken in 1270, in which the royal .saint. Louis IX, 
perished, the i re and noble of I ading 

leader^. The | .11 Uttef f . 1 1 1 U t • . I lie 1 1 1 .' 1 1 1 1 

object, thi salem, v. rned, and the 

Christian world was much depressed bj the in- »wer 



NOTES L63 

ol Mohammedanism; the ultimate benefits of the Crusades to 
\v> stern civilization, as the breaking ap of feudalism, the aboli- 
tion of Berfdom, thi n of commerce, the building up of 
separate Btates of Europe, could nol be foreseen. 
7. Destruction of the Templars. The celebrated "Order of 
the Templars,* 1 or " Knight- of the Temple," was organized at 
salem in 1117, for the purpose of protecting pilgrims 

their Lodging was in a palace near the temple. 
The Quml I first Limited to nine ; but in time the order 

• 1 throughout Europe, becoming very wealthy, corrupt, and 
powerful. Iii 1812 many of its leaders were burned at the a 
ami the order abolished by decree of the Pope. 

B. Papal interdicts. " iv Quincey has probably in mind such 

an interdict as that pronounced in 1200, by [nnocenl III. 

\ il functions were suspended 

and tin- land was in desolation. 11 — Hart. 

The house of Anjou was an old and powerful one, num- 
its dukes and their descendants many royal 
Prom this house sprung the royal house of Plan- 
in !. The i i \ An .. vins were especially fa- 
mous for their monstrous deeds. After the assassination of 
1 les of Durazzo in Hungary, Id lis of Anjou e 

the throne of Naples, bul i expelled by Ladislaus, son of 

Durazzo. The cruelties of Charles of Anjou in Sicily caused 
the terrible uprising in 1282 known as the Sicilian Vespers, in 
which thousands of French people were massacred. 

And by the Emperor. The Emperor Conradin, in 1268, 
attempted to recover the Two Sicilies from the usurper, Charles 
. rjou, but red by Charles and beheaded. It was 

the treachery of the Emperor Sigismund thai led to the burning 
In 14l.">. and the enn 1 and desolating Hussite war. 
The irresponsible absolutism of the Emperors was thus inter- 
preted : •• No laws can bind this Emperor, though he may choose 
to live according t<> them; hone may presume to arraign the 
conduct or question the motives of him who is answerable only 
d." 
17. A double Pope. In 1378 two popes were chosen, Urban 
VI and Clement VII; the one held cnut at Koine, and the 
other at Avignon. For there were two rival popes, 



L64 NOTES 

hurling anathemas and foul ich other, like 

" two dogs snarling over a h Wyclif. In 1402 there 

were even three recognized popes; but in 1 1 ral Coun- 

cil deposed all three, and ended lh< schism." 

21. Those vast rents. The Protestant Reformation in I 
many ami in England. The earlier troubles <>f the Church 
were but preparations,* rehearsals, fortl tor tribulations. 

!>■ Quincey <1 mix metaphors as muchasinthJi 

Bnoe. The sentence reads in raft's; u 8he was aln 
rehearsing, as in still earlier forma Bhe had rehearsed, the first 
rent in her foundations 1 for the coming 

which no man shoul il." 

34: - _'4. Miserere. A musical composition f<>r the 51st Psalm, 
which in I Ins with the word M Have mi rcj ; 

ly appointed in the Etonian Catholic Church for peniten- 
tial B 

26. Te Deum. An old Latin hymn of which the fil 
/ I > a m hi n. i.i \us, W God j sung In 

- of public thanksgiving. 

35 : 18. Abbeys there were, etc Turk quotes Wordsworth's 

>nd part : — 

■• Temples like those smong the Hind 
And iii*»-~«4»i»--~. and Bpires, and abbey wind 
And castles all with Ivy green." 

21. German Diets. Hie imperial Parliament, or I>i«-t. 
composed of three houses, the 8< n d Ble< tors, the Pi 
and ecclesiastical, and tl aperisi Cities. Three of the 

Prince Eli • the Archbishops and 

Cologne. 

36 : •"). Except in 1813. Another exception now is 1870, 
when in the Franco-Prussian War th»-\ ne of 
much fighting, and great sen. 

17. Those mysterious fawns. -*ln Bome of the romai 
of th.- Middle Ages, especially those containing Celtic material, 
s knight, while hunting, is led by his pursuit <>f s white fawn 
■ white Btag or boat an Inhabitant <»f the 

'Happy Other-world') <>r into the confines of the 'Happy 
Other-world ' itself." We are indebted to Pi II 11. Turk 



NOTES 165 

for this explanation, as also for the reference furnishing the 
next . 

19. That ancient stag. "This chasing of the white doe or 
the white hart by the Bpectral huntsman has assumed various 
form-. v ording to Aristotle a white hart was killed by 
j, King «»f Sicily, which a thousand years beforehand 
had been ted to Diana by Diomedes. Alexander the 

• is taid by Pliny to have can-lit ■ white Btag, place. 1 a 
collar of gold about its neck, and afterwards ael it free. Succeed- 
in- heroes have in after days been announced as the capturera 

of this EamOUfl white hart. .Julius Ca.-ar took the place of Alex- 
ander, and Charlemagne caught ■ white hart at both Uagde- 
. and in the Holstein woods." — II m;i»w i< ra'a Traditions, 
t s'ii r - and FolkrLon . p. I 

96. A marquis. A march was the frontier or boundary of a 
country, and originally the officer charged with the guarding of 

the frontier was called a matquii. 

37 : •"». Sir Roger de Coverley. Addison's charming hero, 
who, in Spectator paper No. 122, decides the dispute between 

his two friends about the Ashing by telling them. •• with the air 
of a man who would not give Ids judgment rashly, that much 
might he said on DOtfa Bid 

38:.".. Bergereta. Latin form of the French bergerette, a. 

Shepherd glrL 

12. M. Simond. Louis Simond'a Journal of a '/'<>ur and 
i; i ' Britain during the yean is id ami is if, 

with an appendix on France, written in 1815 and 1810. Do. 
Quinoey was much impressed by the horror of this story, for 
he refers to it more than once. 

29. Prasdial. From Lat. prasdium, a farm ; hence, attached 
to land or farms. 

39: 14. Friday. 1\> binson Crusoe's "man" Friday. 

l'T. St. Louis. Louis IX. the •• Royal Saint" and leader of 

tie Eighth Crusade, Bis religion was that of an anchorite, his 

rnment that of exact justice. " He was," says Voltaire, 

'•in all respects a model for men." The Order of St. Louis 

instituted by Louis XIV for military service. Chevalier 

was the title of lowest rank in such an order. 

" Chevalier, have you fed the hog ?" "My daughter, have 



166 NOTES 

you fed the hog?" "Maid of Orleans, have yon saved the 
royal lilie 

40: 4. If the man that turnips cries. Dr. Johnson's parody 
of some v( • - I I. vpez de Vega, given In Napier's Johnsoni- 
ana, among .Mrs. Piozzi'a Anecdotes of Johnson, 

11. Orifiamme. The ancient royal standard o! France; ■ 
red flag, deeply split into flame-shaped streamers, and borne on 
a gilded la i- and //•/,/<, /w. a flame. 

41:.:. Robert Souths. 1843 . One oi the "Lake 

School" of i ts, and Poet Laureate, a multitudinous writer 

Ire, hie first Long poem, is 
a blank-Terse poem in I . readable bat not poetical. 

I ». ( \ , . : y'a opinion oi 1 1 1* • poem will be found In his essaj on 
Charles Lamb. Southey lived near De Quincey in the neigh- 
boring vill n ick. 

The story. ICichelet'a account la M follows: "At last 
the King received her, and surrounded by all the splendor of 
his court, In the hope, apparently, of disconcerting her. It 
was evening ; the light of fifty torches Illumined the ball, and 
a brilliant array of noblea and above three hundred knights 
were assembled round the monarch. I 

the Borcen it might be, the Inspired mail. . . . 

She entered the splendid circle with all humility, l like a poor 
little shepherdess, 1 distinguished at the first the King, 

who had purposely kept himself amidst the crowd <>f conn 
ami although at first he maintained that be was not the Kim:. 
she fell down and embraced his knees. Hut as h. had not been 
crowned, Bhe only styled him dauphin: 'Gentle dauphin.' she 
addressed him, 'my name is Jeanne la Pncelle. The Kin 

n Bends you word by me that you Bhall he consecrated 

and crowned in the city of Klnims, ami shall he lieutenant 
of the King Of heaven, who is King of France.'" 

12. Coup d'essai. Fr., first trial 

19. "Pricking for sheriffs'* is the annual ceremony of ap- 
pointing sheriffs for each county. A list of persons qualified to 
serve is sent to the sovereign, '-who. without looking at it, 
strikes a bodkin amongst the names, and he whose name is 
pierced is elected.' 1 

l'_'. Happy lady of the islands and the orient. Victoria 



NOTES 161 

was Queen of Great Britain and [reland, and, after 1876, 
Empress of India. 

42 : 16. Un peu fort. A Little Btrong. 

43 : 1. Sacred ampulla. The Baered ampulla of Rheiraa was 
188 flask filled with holy oil, according to tradition, brought 

from heaven bj a dove at the coronation of Clovis, in 4'.m;. The 
kings of Prance down to Louis XVI were anointed with this 
oil The flask was destroyed in the Revolution, a piece with 
a little oil being saved, which was exhausted in anointing 
Charles X. 

:i. The English boy. Eenry V died in 1422, a few weeks 
re the death of Charles VI, for whose throne he had bar- 
gained. His son, Henry VI, who had been proclaimed king at 
Paris when aboul nine months old, was qow eight years old. 

r». Ovens of Rheims. Tradition and superstition required 
that all 1. ranee should be crowned at Rheims. The 

bakeries of Rheims were famous for their biscuits and cakes. 
Hart thinks De Quincey had in mind some French popular 
saying, but more likely his frisky mind was merely indulging 
it- usual pleasantry. After the words. Frano along with him,, 
the original article read- thus: "Trouble us not, lawyer, with 
your quillets. We arc illegal blockheads, so thoroughly with- 
out law that we don't know even if we have a right to be Mock- 
head-; and our mind is made up — that the first man drawn 
from the oven of coronation at Rheims is the man that is b 
into a kin-. All others are counterfeits made of base Indian 
meal— damaged by sea-water." 

21. Matthew Tindal. A deistical writer whose hook hero 
mentioned appeared in l7-".<>. De Quincey is prodding Southey 
for attributing to Joan a deistical speech, the substance <»f 
which is taken from TiiidaPs hook, published three centuries 
after -loan lived. 

22. A parte ante. From a part gone before. 

24. Cottle, Bristol. Joseph Cottle, publisher and bookseller 
of Bristol, wh<» published .f>>»i,, in 1796 ; the friend of Southey 
and Coleridge, something of a poet himself, and the author 
ot Bemini8cence8 of Coleridgt and Southey. 

L'7. Nor 3d, Confession. Between this sentence and the 
next in the original article in Taifs were several lines of De 



168 NOTES 

Quinceyish nonsense, typical of many passages, the suppression 
of which in the revision of 1854 shows the improvement with 
age of De Quincey's taste. The passage is worth reproducing 
as an illustration of his writing at its worst: "Here's a pre- 
cious windfall for the doctors ; they, by snaky tortuosities, 
had hoped, through the aid of a corkscrew (which every D.D. 
or S.T.D. is said to carry in his pocket), for the happiness of 
ultimately extracting from Joanna a few grains of heretical 
powder, or small shot, which might have justified their singeing 
her a little. And just at such a crisis, expressly to justify their 
burning her to a cinder, up gallops Joanna with a brigade of 
guns, unlimbers, and serves them out with heretical grape and 
deistical round-shot enough to lay a kingdom under interdict. 
Any miracles to which Joanna might treat the D.D.'s after 
that, would go to the wrong side of her little account in the 
clerical books. Joanna would be created a Dr. herself, but not 
of divinity. For in the Joanna page of the ledger the entry 
would be : « Miss Joanna, in acct. with the Church, Dr. by 
sundry diabolic miracles, she having publicly preached heresy, 
shown herself a witch, and even tried to corrupt the principles 
of six Church pillars.' " 

30. Both trials. That of condemnation, 1431, and of reha- 
bilitation, 1455. The best witness was Baumette. 

44 : 9. That divine passage. Paradise lie gained, Book I, 
190-206. 

29. France Delivered. In imitation of Jerusalem Delivered, 
Tasso's great epic of the Crusades. 

46 : 11. Coup-de-main. Fr., stroke of hand ; a military 
term, denoting a sudden and rapid attack. 

18. Excepting one man. What man De Quincey has in mind 
is not clear, but quite likely Mac,on, president of the council. 
Her strong supporter at first was the Due d'Alencon. Accord- 
ing to popular accounts, Dunois, the bastard, was her chief 
admirer, whom Schiller in his Jung/ran represents as in love 
with her. 

48 : 13. Nolebat, etc. " She did not wish to use her sword, 
or to kill any one." 

49 : 18. Michelet argues that there ivas "treacherous collu- 
sion." " The probability is that the Pucelle was bargained for 



NOTES 169 

and bought." Her captor sold her to the Duke of Burgundy, 
and the duke sold her to the English. 

24. Bishop of Beauvais. Pierre Cauchon, rector of the Uni- 
versity of Paris, who had been expelled from his bishopric of 
Beauvais (forty-three miles from Paris) as a traitor. He sold 
himself to the English for the promise of an archbishopric. 

27. An echo of the witches' words in Macbeth: " Glamis 
thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be what thou art promised." 
Act I, iii and v. 

30. Triple crown. The Pope's crown consists of a high cap, 
or tiara, of golden cloth, encircled by three coronets, and sur- 
mounted by a ball and cross of gold. The second coronet was 
added to indicate the prerogatives of spiritual and temporal 
power. The third was added (probably by Urban V, 1302) to 
indicate the Trinity. 

50 : 10. Judges examining the prisoner against himself. In 
the French courts the judge questions searchingly the prisoner 
before he is brought to regular trial, a method almost univer- 
sally condemned outside of France. 

51:13. Wretched Dominican. The Dominicans were an order 
of mendicant friars called Fratres Predicatores, "Preaching 
Friars," established in France in 1210 by the Spaniard Domingo 
de Guzman, called St. Dominic. De Quincey has in mind the 
preliminary examination at Poictiers, when a Dominican said 
to Jeanne that if God willed to deliver France he had no need of 
men-at-arms, to which she replied, " The men-at-arms will do 
battle, and God will give the victory." 

20. Mahometan metaphysics. According to which God works 
out his purposes without the use of human means. 

52 : 12. For a less cause than martyrdom. Cf. Genesis ii. 24. 

53 : 20. Rising even now in Paris. Referring to the publica- 
tion of the documents of the trial. See note, p. 27, 29. 

54 : 8. Bringing together from the four winds, etc. Cf. 
Ezekiel xxxvii. 1-10. 

22. Tellurians. Dwellers upon earth ; Lat. tellus, the earth. 

26. Luxor. A palace temple forming a part of the ruins of 
Thebes in Egypt. Of the temple of Karnak, another part of 
these ruins, Fergusson says, "It is perhaps the noblest effort 
of architectural magnificence ever produced by the hand of man." 



170 NOTES 

55 : 13. Marie Antoinette. The queen of Louis XVI, daughter 
of Francis I, Emperor of Germany, who, as head of the " Holy 
Roman Empire," could be regarded as a successor to the 
Roman Caesars. For an account of the career of this brilliant 
and ill-starred queen, consult histories of the French Revolu- 
tion. 

10. Charlotte Corday. Daughter of a Norman nobleman ; 
deeply impressed by the atrocities of the Reign of Terror, she 
made her way to Paris, assassinated Marat, and was immedi- 
ately after guillotined, July 17, 1793. 

In the original article De Quincey included another heroine 
of the Revolution, "How if it were the 'martyred wife of 
Roland,' uttering impassioned truth — truth odious to the 
rulers of her country — with her expiring breath." 

56 : 28. Grafton. Richard Grafton's Chronicle at large and 
meere History of the Affayres of Englande and Kinges of the 
same, from the creation to the date of publication, appeared 
in 1569. According to this fair-minded Englishman, Joan with 
the "foule face" (ugly) was a "devilish witch, and a fanaticall 
Enchanteresse," who was "borne in Burgoyne, in a towne 
called Droymy besyde Vaucolour, which was a greate space a 
Chamberlein in a common Hostrey, and was a Rompe of such 
boldnesse that she would course horses, and ride them to 
water, and do thinges, that other young may dens both abhorred 
and were ashamed to do. . . . She (as a monster) was sent 
to the Dolphyn . . . rehersying to him visions, traunces and 
fables, full of blasphemie, superstition, and hypocrisye, that 
I marveyle much that wise men dyd believe her, and learned 
clerkes would write such phantasy es." 

57 : 1. Holinshead. Raphael Holinshed's Ch?'o nicies of Eng- 
land, Scotland, and Ireland (1587) has the particular fame of 
having furnished Shakspere with the facts for his English 
historical plays. 

His "pleasing testimony" is as follows : "A young wench 
of an eighteene yeeres old, called Jone Arc. Of favour was 
she counted likesome, of person stronglie made and manlie, 
of courage great, hardie, and stout withall, an understander of 
counsels though she were not at them, great semblance of 
chastitie both of bodie and behaviour, the name of Jesus in her 



NOTES 171 

mouth about all her businesses, humble, obedient, and fasting 
diverse daies in the weeke." 

De Quincey was too eager to score a point against Michelet, 
for beyond the above passage Holinshed is as rancorous as 
Grafton. His quaint summary of the last scene of Joan's life 
is worth quoting, " Upon a further definitive sentence declared 
against hir to be relapse and a renouncer of hir oth and 
repentance, was she thereupon delivered over to secular power, 
and so executed by consumption of fire in the old market place 
of Rone, in the self same steed where now saint Michaels 
church stands, hir ashes afterward without the towne wals 
shaken into the wind." 

THE ENGLISH MAIL COACH 

Introductory Note. In Blackwood? s Edinburgh Magazine 
for October, 1849, there appeared an unsigned article entitled 
The English Mail Coach, or the Glory of Motion. There was 
no indication that this article was to be followed by others upon 
the same topic, but in the December number of the magazine 
appeared an article in two sections, with the titles The Vision 
of Sudden Death and Dream-Fugue, on the above theme of 
Sudden Death. In an introductory paragraph the author ex- 
plained the connection of this article with the preceding one. 
" The ultimate object," he says, " was the Dream-Fugue, as an 
attempt to wrestle with the utmost efforts of music in dealing 
with a colossal form of impassioned horror." In 1854, when 
De Quincey revised these papers for the Collective Edition of 
his works, he printed them under the one general title, The Eng- 
lish 3Iail Coach, divided as at present into three sections with 
sub-titles. 

A comparison of the text of the original with that of the 
revised papers affords an exceedingly interesting and valuable 
lesson in the art of literary workmanship. It reveals De 
Quincey as a most scrupulous and laborious critic of himself. 
More than seven hundred changes and corrections were made 
in the text of these three brief papers. Whole passages, too 
rambling and digressive, were cut out bodily ; other passages 
were entirely rewritten, such, for example, as the description 



172 NOTES 

of the Cyclopean driver, and the last section of the Fugue ; 
words, phrases, and sentences were added to heighten the musi- 
cal effects by refining and amplifying the rhythmic movement, 
and sometimes merely to touch up a humorous picture ; on 
every page words were changed for more precise, emphatic, or 
euphonious synonyms ; for example, such substitutions as spe- 
cial for extra, relative for relation, intellect for mind, yet for but, 
impassioned for awakened, made no answer for said nothing, 
since for for, evidently for quite; and in nearly every one of 
these changes there is an obvious gain in artistic perfectness. 
No poet ever refined his lines with a more sensitive and dis- 
criminating taste. Some of these changes have been included 
in the notes, enough to illustrate the care with which De Quin- 
cey's finished products were elaborated. 

68 : 2. Mr. Palmer. John Palmer was for many years pro- 
prietor of the Theatre Royal, in the city of Bath. Experiencing 
much difficulty in securing the prompt appearance of the actors 
at his theater, who journeyed from city to city by slow and 
irregular stage coaches, he conceived a scheme for establishing 
a system of government mail coaches that should carry a limited 
number of passengers, make close connections, and run at a 
rate of speed not less than ten miles an hour. With the aid of 
the great Pitt, the plan was inaugurated, and the first mail 
coach left London, August 8, 1784. Mr. Palmer was appointed 
Comptroller-General of the Post-Office, was elected a member of 
Parliament from Bath, and finally was enriched by large sums 
of money received from the government as compensation for 
his services in promoting the public welfare. 

7. Daughter of a duke. In a footnote De Quincey gives 
the name as "Lady Madeline Gordon." Masson notes a 
mistake here ; De Quincey apparently confused John Palmer 
with Charles Palmer, of Lockley Park, Berks, to whom Lady 
Madelina Gordon, second daughter of Alexander, fourth Duke 
of Gordon, was married in 1805. The National Dictionary of 
Biography states that John Palmer married a Miss Pratt, 
"probably a relative of his friend, Lord Camden." 

69 : 8. National result. With this passage should be read a 
passage in the Autobiography, Chap. XII, Travelling in Eng- 
land in the Old Days, Masson's Ed., Vol. I, 270. 



NOTES 173 

23. Apocalyptic vials. Cf. Revelation xvi. 

2L The battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805, in which Nel- 
son won his last victory; Salamanca, in Spain, where Wellington 
defeated the French, July 22, 1812; Vittoria, in Spain, the 
scene of another of Wellington's victories, June 21, 1813; the 
battle of Waterloo, June 18, 1815, in which Napoleon was 
finally defeated by the English under Wellington. 

70 : 9. Crisis of general prostration. For more than twenty 
years all Europe had been prostrated by the sweeping victories 
of Napoleon. 

21. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are composed 
of many separate colleges, united in a kind of federation with 
a central or general government, very much like the federation 
of free states composing the United States, subject to certain 
limitations of a general government. Each college has its own 
faculty, but all degrees are conferred by the University. 

27. Michaelmas, Lent, Easter, and Act. The names of the 
college terms at Oxford, corresponding respectively to fall, 
winter, spring, and summer term. Michaelmas is the church 
festival celebrated September 29. Act was a name applied 
originally to the public disputation or thesis required for the 
degree of Master or Doctor ; hence it came to be applied to that 
part of the scholastic year in which degrees were conferred. 
This term was also called Trinity, and the winter term Hilary, 
from St. Hilary, an eminent church father, whose feast day 
was January 13. 

71:1. Going down. The usual English phrase, when going 
from London or Oxford into the country ; similarly a journey 
from the country to the city, is " going up to London." 

16. Posting-houses. See De Quincey's description of the 
post-houses in the Autobiography, Masson's Ed., Vol. I, 279. 

25. An old tradition. At first no passengers were carried on 
the outside; then servants and poor people occupied outside 
seats at a low price. 

72 : 1. Attaint. A legal term. A person convicted of high 
crime is "attaint," i.e. is deprived of the privileges of a free 
citizen, and the consequences of this " corruption of the blood " 
are visited upon his descendants unless the attainder is re- 
moved by act of Parliament. See p. 81, 1. 11. 



174 NOTES 

6. Pariahs. In India the Pariah is a member of a caste, or 
social class, far below the regular Brahmins, by whom he is 
shunned as unclean ; hence, generally, a Pariah is an out- 
cast from society. 

23. Salle-a-manger. Hall for eating, dining hall. 

73 : 8. Same logical construction. In a footnote De Quincey 
indicates that he is here paraphrasing a Roman legal maxim : 
" De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est lex." 

14. Questionable characters. In the original Blackwood 
article, this was suspicious characters, and by voluntarily going 
outside was substituted for voluntarily. 

17. Raff. A term applied to the students at Oxford by the 
townspeople. In provincial English, rubbish, refuse; then a 
rowdy, scapegrace; finally, worthless persons generally, the 
riff-raff of society. 

18. Snobs. A " snob " was at first a shoemaker; then, in 
university cant, a " townsman " as opposed to a " gownsman "; 
and, more generally, any common person, or member of the 
profanum vulgus ; then one who vulgarly apes gentility ; 
finally, in provincial language, a workman who refuses to strike, 
or who works for lower wages than other workmen, a " rat," 
or in the current language of strikes, a" scab." De Quincey 
has in mind the second usage. See Century Dictionary. Nob, 
probably an abbreviation of nobleman, is a member of the 
aristocracy, or any superior person. 

19. Constructively. By inference ; a legal usage. 

74 : 16. Such was the difficulty, etc. This sentence origi- 
nally read: "Under coercion of this great practical difficulty 
we instituted, etc." 

30. Great wits jump. Great wits agree. Cf. Merchant of 
Venice, II, ix. 32 : " I will not jump with common spirits." 

75 : 5. The ambassador, etc. The original of this story is a 
brief passage in Staunton's Account of the Earl of Macartney's 
Embassy to China in 1792, Vol. II, 164 (London, 1797) : 
" When a splendid chariot, intended as a present for the Em- 
peror, was unpacked and put together, nothing could be more 
admired ; but it was necessary to give directions for taking off 
the box ; for when the mandarins found out that so elevated a 
seat was destined for the coachman who was to drive the horses, 



NOTES 175 

they expressed the utmost astonishment that it should he pro- 
posed to place any man in a situation above the Emperor. So 
easily is the delicacy of the people shocked in whatever relates 
to the person of their exalted sovereign." 

Any curious fact or picturesque incident expanded with a 
marvelous growth under the warm and fructifying influence of 
De Quincey's imagination. Any fact, even the most serious, 
was never safe in his presence. Let it expose hut for a moment 
its picturesque side, and he would expand it into an elaborate 
fiction, comic or serious, according as the mood seized him. 
As Gosse remarks, " De Quincey was but little enamored of the 
naked truth, and a suspicion of the fabulous hangs, like a mist, 
over all his narrations." 

12. Hammercloth. The cloth that covers the driver's seat 
or box, so called, it is thought, from the practice of carrying 
under it hammer, nails, etc. The clause "was nearest to the 
moon," was added in the revised version. 

25. Whole flowery people. China is called the Flowery 
Kingdom, as well as the Celestial Empire. 

76 : 10. Checkstrings. Strings used by the inside passengers 
for communicating with the driver. 

Jury reins. A jury-mast is a temporary mast substituted 
for a broken one ; so a jury-rudder. Hence any temporary 
makeshift may be designated by this nautical combination. 

24. Ca ira. "'This will do,' 'This is the go'; a proverb 
of the French Revolutionists when they were hanging the aris- 
tocrats in the streets, etc., and the burden of one of the most 
popular revolutionary songs, Qa ira, ga ira, ga ira." — Masson. 
The music of this song was that of a popular air called Carillon 
National, a great favorite with Marie Antoinette. It is said 
that the words were first suggested by Lafayette to a street- 
singer, having remembered them from Franklin's common 
reply, " Ca ira, 9a ira," to questions about the progress of the 
American Revolution. 

28. Chief seats in synagogues. Cf. Matthew xxiii. 6. 

77 : 6. Warming pans. A warming pan keeps the bed warm 
until the occupant takes possession. So a person would be 
hired as a "dummy" to hold a seat until the real occupant 
arrived. 



176 NOTES 

9. Aristotle's, Zeno's, Cicero's. Aristotle, the most influential 
of the Greek philosophers, wrote valuable works upon almost 
every topic of human concern, among them being the celebrated 
Nicomachean Ethics. Zeno was the founder of the Stoic school 
of philosophers, who professed and taught the stern moral doc- 
trine of indifference to pains and pleasures alike. Cicero wrote 
De OJJiciis, a treatise on moral obligations, the morality of 
which is that of the practical Roman politician. 

78 : 0. Noters and protesters. A noter is a notary (Scotch, 
notar), who " is empowered by law to note protests and certify 
the same." A note or bill of exchange is said to "go to pro- 
test" when payment is refused and the fact is certified by a 
notary in a "note of protest." The passage is an illustration 
of De Quincey's characteristic playing with words. 

8. House of life. An astrological term. The heavens are 
divided into " houses," to one of which man's life is allocated, 
to use De Quincey's word, by the astrologer. Astrological 
shadows are the misfortunes of one who is " ill-starred," born 
under the wrong star. 

25. De Quincey confused Von Troil's Letters on Iceland 
with Niels Horrebow's Natural History of Iceland, which con- 
tains such a chapter, and a similar one on owls. Quite likely 
De Quincey borrowed the allusion from Boswell's Johnson 
(Vol. Ill, 316, Hill's Ed.): — "Langton said very well to me 
afterwards, that he could repeat Johnson's conversation before 
dinner, as Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete 
chapter of The Natural History of Iceland, from the Danish of 
Horrebow ; the whole of which was exactly thus : — 

' Chapter LXII. Concerning Snakes 

1 There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole 
island.' " 

26. Parliamentary rat. One who deserts his falling party or 
cause, as a rat deserts a sinking ship. "Though Mackworth 
ratted to my own side, I fear it must be confessed that he did 
rat.'* 1 — George Saintsburt. In provincial slang "to rat it" 
is to run away quickly. 

79 : 9. Laesa majestas. An offense against majesty or sov- 
ereignty, treason. A Roman legal phrase. 



NOTES 111 

80 : 7. Jam proximus. Virgil's ^Eneid, II. 311 : — 

Jam Deiphobi dedit ampla ruinam 
Vulcano superante domus, jam proximus ardet 
Ucalegon. 
(Now the spacious house of Deiphobus falls in ruins as the fire 
overtops it, now [the house of his] neighbor Ucalegon burns.) 

15. In Syriac or in Coptic. That is, in an unknown language. 

18. Waybill. The passenger list. In England passengers 
are said to be booked, instead of being ticketed, and a ticket 
office is a booking office. 

20. No dignity is perfect, etc. The characteristic judgment 
of De Quincey in this passage is amply illustrated in his best 
writings. 

81 : 8. Crane-neck quarterings. The horses, suddenly urged 
by the whip, crane their necks forward as they haul the heavy 
carts to one side, — quartering across the road. See p. 124, 1. 14, 
and De Quincey's note. 

15. Benefit of clergy. In old English law, the privilege 
of the clergy, and finally of all who could read, to be exempted 
from trial and punishment by the civil courts. To test his abil- 
ity to read, a verse of Latin, usually the first verse of the 51st 
Psalm, was given to the accused, called the neck verse, as by 
reading it he saved his neck. Cf. Jew of Malta, " Within forty 
feet of the gallows conning his neck verse." The law was not 
wholly repealed until 1827. 

17. Systole and diastole. The regular pulsation or beating 
of the heart consists of two alternate movements, dilation or 
di-as'to-le and contraction or sys'to-le. 

26. Quarter Sessions. A court held quarterly in England in 
the counties by a justice of the peace, for the trial of minor 
offenses and the administration of poor laws and highway laws. 

82 : 15. False echoes of Marengo. At the battle of Marengo, 
June 14, 1800, General Desaix saved the day for the French, but 
was himself shot through the heart. " When the report of his 
[Desaix's] death was made known to Buonaparte, he hypo- 
critically exclaimed, 'Why cannot I weep?'" — Gifford's 
Memoirs of the Life and Campaigns of Napoleon Buonaparte, 
Vol. I, 373. 

Vengeur (footnote). In a battle between the French and 



178 NOTES 

English fleets, June 1, 1794, the Vengeur was sunk. The report 
that the crew went down with the ship, shouting "Vive la 
Kepublique " was circulated by Bare re, who, in the opinion of 
Macaulay, " approached nearer than any person in history or 
fiction to the idea of consummate and universal depravity." 
Carlyle accepted the story, in his French devolution, but after- 
ward corrected himself in an essay on The Sinking of the 
Vengeur. 

La Garde meurt, etc. (footnote). The " Guard dies, but does 
not surrender"; said of Napoleon's famous "Old Guard" at 
Waterloo, supposedly by General Cambronne. The phrase 
" was invented by Iiougemont, a prolific author of notes, two 
days after the battle, in the IndependanV — Fournier, quoted 
in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. 

Talleyrand (footnote) was a celebrated French statesman and 
wit, to whom floating witticisms are attributed, much as witty 
English sayings are attributed to Sydney Smith. 

83 : 19. False, fleeting, perjured Brummagem. An echo of 
Pilchard III, I, iv, 55: "False, fleeting, perjured Clarence." 
Brummagem, a corruption of Birmingham, is a name applied to 
cheap, showy jewelry and other metal trinkets, manufactured 
extensively in Birmingham. This part of the sentence was 
added in the revision. 

25. Jacobinical. The Jacobins were the radical and violent 
democrats of the French Revolution, who were most active in 
the annihilation of aristocracy. 

84 : 5. Slipped. A hunting term, to slip hounds, or haivks, 
is to let them loose upon the game. Cheetah is the name of 
a species of leopard used in India for hunting. The animal is 
taken to the field hooded, ard at the proper time slipped. 

10. Tower of moral strength, etc. Cf. Bichard III, V, iii, 12 : 
" Besides, the King's name is a tower of strength, which they 
upon the adverse party want." 

20. My heart burn within me. Cf. Luke xxiv. 32. 

27. A cat may look at a king. A very old saying, found 
in the "Proverbs" of John Heywood, published in 1546, the 
earliest collection of English colloquial sayings. 

85 : 4. Story from one of our elder dramatists. Barrow refers 
this to Dryden's Aurengzebe, but mistakenly. The Omrahs are 



NOTES 179 

in that play, but not the story. The word Omrah was used by 
the earlier English authors in the sense of lord or grandee at 
the court of oriental princes; in reality the plural of amir 
(ameer). Professor Turk quotes a similar story from the trans- 
lation of Caius's Of English Dogs in Arber's English Garner, 
Vol. Ill, 253. The Indian setting of the story was added by 
De Quincey in the revision. The original has prince in place of 
sultan, and the words in contempt . . . from Agra and Lahore 
were originally in sight also of all the astonished field-sports- 
men, spectators, and followers. 

30. Paste diamonds. Imitation diamonds, made of a glass 
prepared for the purpose, called paste. 

Roman pearls are imitation pearls made of alabaster, fine 
wax, and other substances, manufactured especially in Rome. 

86 : 3. The 6th of Edward Longshanks. There is no such 
law. De Quincey is making " game " of the Welshman, whose 
native country was subdued by Edward I, in 1283. In Black- 
wood it was " the 10th of Edward III, Chap. 15." 

24. Not magna loquimur ... but vivimus. We do not 
speak great things, but live them. 

87 : 18. Nile nor Trafalgar. Nelson's two great naval battles 
with the French. Notice the omission, by "poetic license," of 
neither before Nile. 

28. By culinary process. By boiling water to make steam. 

30. Laureled mail. When "going down with victory," the 
mail coach would be decked with the emblems of victory ; 
"horses, men, carriages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers,' 
oak-leaves and ribbons," p. 97, 1. 20. 

88 : 3. Pot-wallopings. Literally pot-boilings ; Anglo-Saxon 
weallan, to boil ; Early English, walopen. 

89 : 21. Ulysses even, etc. An allusion to Homer's Odyssey, 
Books XXI and XXII, describing the contest of Ulysses with 
the suitors of his wife, Penelope, several of whom he dispatched 
with his great "polished bow," which only he could bend to 
the string. 

90 : 10. About Waterloo. About 1815, the year of the battle 
of Waterloo. 

26. Say, all our praises, etc. Pope's Moral Essays, III, 249 : 
" But all our praises why should Lords engross? " 



180 NOTES 

91 : 17. Turrets. Chaucer's use of the word is in The 
Knight's Tale, 1294: " Colers of golde, and toretz fyled rounde," 
where it refers to the ring on a dog's collar. De Quincey 
remembered his Chaucer imperfectly. 

23. They hanged liberally. Forgery, pocket picking, sheep 
stealing, and similar offenses were then capital crimes. 

24. Tree. The gallows or gibbet. 

92 : 22. Mr. Waterton. [Sindbad, the sailor in the Arabian 
Nights, being induced to carry the Old Man of the Sea on his 
back, made him drunk, and then crushed his head with a 
stone.] Charles Waterton was an English naturalist who pub- 
lished in 1825 Wanderings in South America, which contains a 
description of this remarkable adventure with a cayman. Syd- 
ney Smith wrote a review of the book for the Edinburgh Revieio 
of February, 1826, in which he quoted the passage in full, and 
quite likely this was De Quincey's source for the story. The 
real story runs as follows: "By the time the cayman [which 
was caught by a shark hook and strong rope] was within two 
yards of me, I saw he was in a state of fear and perturbation ; 
I instantly dropped the mast [of the canoe], sprung up and 
jumped on his back, turning half round as I vaulted, so that 
I gained my seat with my face in a right position ; I immediately 
seized his fore-legs, and by main force twisted them on his 
back ; then they served me for a bridle. He now seemed to have 
recovered from his surprise ; and probably fancying himself in 
hostile company, he began to plunge furiously, and lashed the 
sand with his long, powerful tail. I was out of reach of the 
strokes of it, by being near his head. He continued to plunge 
and strike, and made my seat very uncomfortable. It must 
have been a fine sight for an unoccupied spectator. The people 
roared out in triumph, and were so vociferous that it was some 
time before they heard me tell them to pull me and my beast 
of burden further inland. ... It was the first and last time 
I was ever on a cayman's back. Should it be asked how I 
managed to keep my seat, I would answer, I hunted some years 
with Lord Darlington's fox-hounds." 

23. Cayman. The proper Spanish word, caiman, for alli- 
gator, "applied popularly to the alligators of the West Indies 
and South America." — Century Dictionary. 



NOTES 181 

93 : 18. Regularly hunted. Regularly ridden in the hunt. 
20. Take a six-barred gate. Jump a gate six bars high. An 
idiom of the turf. 

22. If, therefore, etc. This paragraph is only about one 
fifth as long as when first printed. The original paragraph is 
given in Masson's Edition, Vol. XIII, p. 289. 

23. The shadow of the pyramids grows less. Because of 
the removal of stones from the sides, and the piling of the 
drifting sand at their bases. 

95 : 5. Quartered heraldically. In heraldry, quartering is 
the division of the shield of an escutcheon into four or 
more parts, for the purpose of displaying the coats of allied 
families. 

12. Going down with Victory. For an excellent introduc- 
tory note to this second part of the Glory of Moliui, see Mas- 
son's De Quincey (Men of Science Series), p. 193. 

19. Long succession of victories. Trafalgar, 1805 ; capture 
of the Danish fleet, 1807 ; Baylen and Vimiera, 1808 ; Corunna, 
Talavera, and Oporto, 1809 ; Busaco and Torres Vedras, 1810 ; 
Fuentesde Onore and Albuera, 1811 ; Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, 
and Salamanca, 1812 ; Vittoria and the Pyrenees, 1813 ; Orthez 
and Toulouse, 1814; Waterloo, June 18, 1815. In the years 
1806 and 1807 Napoleon won his great victories over the Prus- 
sians at Jena and the Russians at Eylau. 

20. Titans. In Greek mythology a race of giants who made 
war against the gods of Olympus, making a scaling ladder to 
heaven by piling Mount Ossa upon Mount Pelion. 

21. Inappreciable value. Of very great value, rather than, 
of very little value, the usual sense of* the word. 

96 : 2. One quarter. England. Nearly all Europe was pros- 
trated in despair by Napoleon's sweeping victories. Only 
England seemed to make headway against him, in the Spanish 
peninsula, where he did not command in person. 

13. Prelibation. Foretaste. 

17. Lombard Street is the financial center, the " Wall Street," 
of London, so called because the early bankers and money lend- 
ers were Lombards or Italians. St. Martin' 1 s-le-Orand, a street 
deriving its name from an old church. The present post-office 
building was erected in 1829. 



4 
182 NOTES 

97 : 2. Attelage. A team of horses ; here it means the four 
horses and the coach to which they are attached. 

98 : 14. Draw up. The waiting coaches are distinguished by 
the names of the great towns to which they are destined, and 
each is ordered to draw up in front of the post office to receive 
its portion of the mail and then to draw off. 

100 : 20. Be thou whole. Suggested by Luke viii. 48. 

101 : 27. Professional salute. The coachman's professional 
salute is a raising of the elbow of the whip hand. 

102 : 13. Charwomen. Women who work by day's work or 
do odd jobs ; old English chares, or in Yankee speech, chores. 

103 : 10. Gazette. This word was applied at first to any 
newspaper ; then specifically to the three official newspapers 
established by government in Great Britain, published at Lon- 
don, Edinburgh, and Dublin ; finally, as in the text, to any 
official announcement or account of an important event. 

30. Called fey. Fey or fay is not Celtic, as De Quincey 
assumed, but is the Anglo-Saxon faege preserved in Lowland 
Scotch, meaning fated, doomed. The expression ' ' you are surely 
fey" would be applied in Scotland, Masson says, "to a person 
observed to be in extravagantly high spirits, or in any mood 
surprisingly beyond the bounds of his ordinary temperament, 
— the notion being that the excitement is supernatural and a 
presage of his approaching death or of some other calamity 
about to befall him." 

104 : 1. Wake. Originally a vigil or church festival ; hence, 
any merrymaking, as in Milton's Comus, 121 : " Their merry 
wakes and pastimes keep." The Irish "wake" is a watching 
with the dead, which deteriorates into a revel. 

17. Holy. This climax is characteristic of the workings of 
De Quincey's penetrative insight. He saw truth through the 
emotions. The words "theatrical and holy" were added in the 
revised edition. 

25. Imperfect one of Talavera. At the Spanish town of 
Talavera Wellington won a great victory, but was unable to 
reap its fine results on account of the disloyal support of the 
Spaniards under Cuesta. " The conduct of Cuesta, in this pre- 
cipitate retreat, is indefensible. ... In quitting the position 
of Talavera, Cuesta had abandoned the only situation in which 



NOTES 183 

the advance of Victor on the British rear could be resisted with 
any prospect of success. . . . The whole calculations of Sir 
Arthur Wellesley were at once overthrown." — Hamilton's 
Annals of the Peninsula Campaigns. 

105 : 6. The 23d Dragoons. This charge is described in Na- 
pier's Peninsula War, Book VIII, Chap. 6, in part, as follows : 
" In the front of the 23d the chasm was more practicable, the 
English blood was hot, and the regiment plunged down without 
a cluck, — men and horses rolling over each other in dreadful 
confusion ; the survivors, still untamed, mounted the opposite 
bank by two's and three's, and Col. Seymour being severely 
wounded, Major Frederick Ponsonby, a hardy soldier, rallied 
all who came up, and passing through the midst of Villatte's 
columns, which poured in a fire from each side, fell with inex- 
pressible violence upon a brigade of French chasseurs in the 
rear. The combat was fierce, but short. . . . Those who were 
not killed or taken made for Massecour's Spanish division and 
so escaped, leaving behind two hundred and seven men and 
officers, or about half the number that went into action." 

29. Glorified and hallowed to the ear of all London. For 
these words the original has "known to myself and all Lon- 
don." For " To-morrow, said I to myself etc. (1. 5 below) 
the original was, " I said to myself, to-morrow or the next day 
she will hear the worst. For this night wherefore," etc. 

31. Aceldama. The potter's field outside of Jerusalem, 
purchased with the bribe which Judas took for betraying his 
master, and therefore called the " field of blood"; hence, any 
field of slaughter. Elsewhere De Quincey speaks of " immense 
tracts converted by war into one universal Aceldama." 

107 : 10. What is to be taken, etc. This sonorous introduc- 
tory question was substituted for the simpler original, " What is 
to be thought of sudden death ? " 

14. Consummation . . . fervently to be desired. Cf. Ham- 
let, III, i, 60 : — 

' ' To die, — to sleej), — 
No more ; and by a sleep to say we end 
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wished." 



184 NOTES 

17. Caesar the Dictator. This incident is given by Plutarch 
as follows : "The day before his assassination, he supped with 
Marcus Lepidus ; and as he was signing some letters, according 
to his custom, as he reclined at table, there arose a question 
what sort of death was the best. At which he immediately, 
before any one could speak, -said, ' A sudden one.' " — Clough- 
Dryden Translation, Vol. IV, 320. 

18. Ccena. In his essay, The Casuistry of Boman Meals, 
De Quincey explains that the Roman ccena corresponded to the 
modern dinner or evening meal. 

21. Eligible. Desirable, fit to be chosen ; Latin, eligere, to 
choose. The more usual sense is qualified to be chosen. 

23. Divine Litany. The Greek Xiraveia, a prayer. The 
General Supplication in the Book of Common Prayer, in which 
the response of the congregation to many of the petitions is, 
Good Lord, deliver us. 

108 : 4. Noblest of Romans. In his essay on The Ccesars, 
De Quincey maintains Shakspere's exalted judgment of Caesar: 
"The foremost man of all this world." Masson says: "The 
character of the ' mightiest Julius' is estimated by De Quincey, 
one is glad to find, as he was by Shakspere, and has been by 
every other fit modern authority, as the noblest of Roman men. 1 ' 

109 : 31. BiaQavaTos. Greek fiiavos, violent, and davaros, 
death. In his essay on Suicide, De Quincey discusses the theme 
of a treatise by John Donne, entitled, piadavaros, A Decla- 
ration of that Paradox or Thesis, that Self-homicide is not so 
naturally Sin, that it may never be otherwise. From this 
source he doubtless derived the word, which is not strictly 
classical. 

Ill : 2. One aspect. In this paragraph De Quincey is philoso- 
phizing the particular incident which he is about to describe. 

13. Exasperation. Here used in the unusual sense of increase 
of intensity. 

19. Far from venial. There is a moral obligation to act in 
behalf of one's self as well as in behalf of others. 

23. Apprehensive. * Sensitive. 

30. Twinkling of an eye. Cf. 1 Corinthians xv. 51, 52: 
" We shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an 
eye, at the last trump." 



NOTES 185 

112 : 12. That dream, etc. De Quincey uses this illustration 
again in the Confessions. Masson's Ed., Ill, 316. 

27. The ancient earth groans. Cf. Paradise Lost, IX, 
1000-1008. 
29. Nature, from her seat, etc. From Paradise Lost, IX, 782. 

113 : 10. The incident, etc. This explanatory and transi- 
tional passage, down to 1. 24, was inserted in the revised edition. 
The original began abruptly : "As I drew near to the Man- 
chester post-office, I found that it was considerably past mid- 
night," etc. 

114 : 14. I had left it . . . said pocket handkerchief. The 
discoverer of a new land hoists the flag of his country as a 
token of possession. This characteristically whimsical digres- 
sion was much elaborated in the revision. For " hoisted his 
pocket handkerchief once and forever " the original reads 
"planted his throne forever"; and the close of the sentence 
reads: " So that all people found after this warning, either aloft 
in the atmosphere, or in the shafts, or squatting on the soil, 
will be treated as trespassers — that is, decapitated by their very 
faithful and obedient servant, the owner of the said bunting." 

21. Jus dominii. Law of lordship, or ownership. A Roman 
legal phrase. So below, jus gentium, law of nations. 

20. Squatting. A squatter is one who occupies land to 
which he has no legal title. 

115 : 7. For want of a criminal. At the end of this para- 
graph a long passage of fantastic foolery was cut out by De 
Quincey's revisionary judgment. It explains that there was no 
other passenger aboard the mail except "a horrid creature of 
the class known to the world as insiders, but whom young Ox- 
ford called sometimes ' Trojans,' in opposition to our Grecian 
selves, and sometimes ' vermin.' " Like a Turkish Effendi, who 
never mentions a pig by name, he himself will not mention the 
insider "by his gross natural name," and explains why this 
"other creature" was not present at the accident. "We 
dropped the creature — or the creature, by natural imbecility, 
dropped itself — within the first ten miles from Manchester." 
Then, with a serio-comic discussion of a proper epitaph for him, 
the passage closes with the remark, "But why linger on the 
subject of vermin ? " 



186 NOTES 

8. Small quantity of laudanum. At this time De Quincey's 
opium habit was at its worst, and his judgment as to quantity 
could hardly be trusted. In 1816, he says, a decanter holding 
"a quart of ruby-colored laudanum," and " a book of German 
metaphysics placed by its side," would "sufficiently attest' ' his 
being in the neighborhood. 

13. Assessor. One who sits by another ; companion. Latin 
assidere, to sit by. 

20. Monstrum horrendum. Virgil's JEneid, III, 658. The 
Cyclops Polyphemus, whose eye was put out by Ulysses. The 
Cyclops were monstrous, man-eating giants, with one huge eye 
in the middle of the forehead. 

25. Calendars. The calenders are dervishes, or Mohamme- 
dan monks, who go about preaching in the market-places, 
professing poverty, and living by alms. The allusion is to the 
History of the Three Calenders in the Arabian Nights. 

116 : 5. Al Sirat. The bridge over which Mohammedan 
souls must pass to heaven, "not so wide as a spider's thread." 
The wicked fall off into hell below. 

9. Cognominated. Coined by De Quincey. The Romans 
sometimes added to the nomen (family name) and prasnomen 
(individual name) a cognomen, as a mark of special distinction, 
as Publius Scipio Africanus. 

Cyclops Diphrelates. As originally published in Black- 
wood, this passage reads thus: "I used to call him Cyclops 
Mastigopharus (Cyclops the Whip-bearer), until I observed 
that his skill made whips useless, except to fetch off an imper- 
tinent fly from a leader's head ; upon which I changed his Gre- 
cian name to Cyclops Diphrelates (Cyclops the Charioteer). 
I, and others known to me, studied under him the diphrelatic 
art. Excuse, reader, a word too elegant to be pedantic, and 
also take this remark from me as a gage d'amitie — that no 
word ever was or can be pedantic which, by supporting a dis- 
tinction, supports the accuracy of logic, or which fills up a 
chasm for the understanding." 

117 : 3. Procrastinating. Editors and publishers had trying 
experiences with this weakness. De Quincey treats the accusa- 
tion humorously in his essays. In Surtilege and Astrology he 
speaks of " a lecture addressed to myself by an ultra-moral 



NOTES 187 

friend — a lecture on procrastination," and protests against its 
publication on the ground that he could not allow himself " to 
be advertised in a book as a procrastinator on principle." 

28. Virtually (though not in law). Kendal is larger and 
more important than Appleby, the legal capital. 

The Pythagarian letter s is the Greek T, ypsilon, which in 
the language of Pythagarian philosophy "represents the sacred 
triad, formed by the duad proceeding from the monad." 

118:15. Aurigation. Driving. Latin auriga, a charioteer. 
Apollo, as the sun god, drives the fiery steeds and golden chariot 
of the sun across the arch of heaven each day, starting from the 
purple palace of Aurora, goddess of the Morn. 

20. Whole Pagan Pantheon. All the gods of the pagans. 
A De Quinceyish thrust at the human frailties of the ancient 
divinities. Pantheon is a temple dedicated to all the gods; 
Greek irav, all, and deos, a god. 

119 : 0. Pastoral surveillance. The attorneys watchfully 
herd the witnesses, as a shepherd tends his sheep. 

8. Middle watch. On shipboard the day is divided into five 
icatches, or periods of four hours each, and two dog v:atches of 
two hours each. The middle watch is from twelve to four a.m. 
I)e Quincey originally wrote, "that part of it when the least 
temptations existed to conviviality." 

18. Seven atmospheres of sleep. The pressure, or weight, 
of one atmosphere is fifteen pounds to the square inch. Sleep 
was as heavy upon him as seven atmospheres. 

120 : 5. Lilliputian Lancaster. In Swift's Gullivers Travels, 
the hero visits the land of the Lilliputians, people only six 
inches in height. Lancaster, though the capital of the country, 
is a very small town in comparison with its great neighbors, 
Liverpool and Manchester. 

7. Powerful established interests. The sitting of the county 
court, or assizes, at Lancaster would be of great material advan- 
tage to its citizens, tradespeople, and others. This digressive ob- 
servation illustrates the vicious propensity of De Quincey's mind 
for explanations and details that clog and confuse his literary art. 

121 : 5. In the middle of which lay my own birthday. De 
Quincey was born August 15, 1785, at Greenhay, near Man- 
chester. 



188 NOTES 

8. Sigh-born (footnote). Giraldus Cambrensis, Gerald de 
Barry (1147-1220), a Welsh historian and ecclesiastic, wrote the 
Itinerarium Cambrice, or Journey in Wales. 

11. Original curse of labor. Genesis iii. 19: " In the sweat 
of thy face shalt thou eat bread.'" 

122 : 3. Halcyon repose. According to ancient belief, while 
the halcyon, or king-fisher, is breeding in a nest floating upon 
the water, the sea is miraculously calm. 

10. Limited atmosphere. The extent of the atmosphere 
above the earth's surface is variously estimated by scientists to 
be from one hundred to six hundred miles. 

25. Their father's house. Cf. John xiv. 2 : "In my father's 
house are many mansions." 

26. Sabbatic vision. Peaceful, restful vision. The Hebrew 
word Sabbath means day of rest. 

123 : 12. Signal is flying for action. A naval metaphor. 
The order for beginning a battle is given by a signal flag on the 
admiral's ship. 

125 : 1(5. Charlemagne. Charles the Great (747-814), king 
of the Franks and Emperor of the Romans. No special statue 
is in De Quincey's mind. For " imperial rider " the original has 
"marble emperor." 

19. Taxed cart. More commonly tax cart; in England, 
a light open spring cart like the dog cart. Formerly such vehi- 
cles were subject to taxation. 

27. Reduced to my frail opium-shattered self. In the 
original, " my single self." 

126 : 19. Gothic aisle. This avenue of " umbrageous trees " 
shapes itself into a "mighty minster" in the Dream-Fugue. 
The likeness between Gothic architecture and avenues of inter- 
lacing trees has given strong color to the theory that the sugges- 
tion for this form of cathedral came from the forests. 

127 : 7. Shout of Achilles . . . son of Peleus, aided by 
Pallas. Homer's Iliad, XVIII, 217 et seq.: — 

" Forth marched the chief, and distant from the crowd, 
High on the rampart raised his voice aloud ; 
With her own shout Minerva swells the sound, 
Troy starts astonished, and the shores rebound. . . . 
Thrice from the trench his dreadful voice he raised, 
And thrice they tied, confounded and amazed." 

— Pope's Translation. 



NOTES 189 

128 : 18. For a shilling a day. " When a man enlists for a 
soldier he receives from the recruiting sergeant a shilling ; thus 
when a man enlists he is said to 'take the Queen's shilling.' " 
— Barrow. 

129 : 30. Rising to a fence. Rising to leap a fence ; a horse- 
man's phrase. 

130 : 23. Faster than ever mill race, etc. This sentence origi- 
nally read : " We ran past them faster than ever mill race in 
our inexorable flight." Masson remarks that De Quincey's 
"sensitiveness to fit sound, at such a moment of wild rapidity, 
suggested the inversion." 

28. Swingle-bar. The same as swingletree, singletree, and 
whippletree ; a crossbar, pivoted in the middle, to which the 
traces are attached. 

31. Accurately parallel, etc. The meaning is that the two 
wheels of the gig were not in a line parallel to the coach ; that is, 
the gig was turned not quite fully at right angles with the coach. 

131 : 8. "This sentence, 'Here was the map,' etc., is an 
insertion in the reprint ; and one observes how artistically it 
causes the due pause between the horror as still in rush of trans- 
action, and the backward look at the wreck when the crash was 
past." — Masson. 

133 (Title) : Dream-fugue : The fugue (Latin fuga, flight) is 
an elaborate form of musical composition, of which the various 
parts or melodies are always pursuing each other. The theme, 
presented in the first part, appears and disappears at intervals, 
connecting and interweaving the melodies into one complex 
progressive whole. It will be seen that in composing his dream 
material into form, De Quincey held very closely to the musical 
model. The minor elements from The Glory of Motion, and 
the main theme from The Vision of Sudden heath, will be 
readily recognized as they appear and reappear throughout the 
dreams. 

7. Tumultuosissimamente. Most tumultuously. To com- 
plete the similitude of the musical score, a direction for the 
tempo or movement is included. There is some force in Mas- 
son's remark that this direction "rather repels one, as too sug- 
gestive of artificiality and the flourished baton of the leader of 
an orchestra." 



190 NOTES 

11. Woman's Ionic form. Of the three orders of Greek 
architecture, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, the Ionic is regarded 
as possessing the most grace and refinement of beauty in its 
lines and proportions, differing from the massive severity of the 
Doric as woman differs from man. 

18. Shriveling scroll. Barrow and Hunter quote Scott's 
paraphrase of the ancient Latin hymn, Dies Irce, in the Lay of 
the Last Minstrel, v. 31 : — 

" When shriveling like a parched scroll, 
The flaming heavens together roll." 

134 : 8. It is summer. In the Confessions (Masson's Ed. 
Ill, 444), De Quincey says that "the contemplation of death 
generally is (coeteris paribus) more affecting in summer than in 
any other season of the year . . . and any particular death, if 
not actually more affecting, at least haunts my mind more 
obstinately and besiegingly, in that season." 

12. Fairy pinnace. The "frail reedy gig " has now become 
in dream a fairy pinnace, and the great coach has become a 
huge three-decker, a man-of-war of the old wooden type. The 
next sentence is a glorification of England's dominion over the 
sea. 

26. Corymbi. Clusters of fruit or flowers ; plural of the 
Latin corymbus. 

135 : 20. On the weather beam. On the weather, or wind- 
ward, side of the ship. 

27. Quarrel. A crossbow arrow, having a square or four- 
edged head ; Low Latin quadrellus, Latin quadrum, a square. 

136:25. Sweet funeral bells. This third "movement" is 
especially filled with musical effects, beginning with pianissimo 
softness and ending with a grand fortissimo climax of victory. 
Note the transition from the second part to the third, without 
break of sentence. 

138 : 23. Too full of joy . . . orchestras of earth. In the 
original, " too full of joy that acknowledged no fountain but 
God, to utter themselves by other language than by tears, by 
restless anthems, by reverberations rising from every choir, of 
the Gloria in excelsis.' 1 '' 

139 : 8. Waterloo and Recovered Christendom ! The final 



NOTES 191 

triumph over Napoleon and the French at Waterloo was a 
relief and a source of rejoicing to England and the greater part 
of Europe like the relief of a final victory of Christianity over 
paganism. De Quincey often expresses the excessive views of a 
loyal English Tory of the period. 
16. The darkness comprehended it. Cf. John i. 5. 

141 : 24. Crecy. The battle of CrCcy, 1346, in which the 
English won an illustrious victory over the French. 

142 : 9. Tidings of great joy. Cf. Luke ii. 10. 

IS. A Dying Trumpeter. " The incident of the dying trum- 
peter, who rises from a marble bas-relief, and carries a marble 
trumpet to his marble lips for the purpose of warning the 
female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested by my own 
imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn and to blow a warning 
blast." — De Quincey. 

143 : 1. Carried temptation into the graves. Tempted the 
dead to rise. 
5. Caught up to God. Cf. Revelation xii. 5. 
9. Crimson glory. A beautiful effulgence, like that of the 
aureola of a saint. 

21. That dreadful being. " Death, the crowned phantom," 
in the Vision, p. 132, 1. 10. 

144:1. Then was completed, etc. This opening sentence 
originally read: "Then rose the agitation, spreading through 
the infinite cathedral, to its agony ; then was completed the 
passion of the mighty fugue." In the revision of this section 
De Quincey made eighteen changes, all serving to increase and 
perfect the poetic splendor of the passage. 

6. Choir and antechoir. In the choir of a cathedral the 
choristers are seated in stalls along each side, so that the two 
sections face each other. 

12. Sanctus. The hymn Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of 
Hosts. 

20. The quick and the dead. The living and the dead. Cf 
2 Timothy iv. 1. 

145 : 1. Having hid his face. That is, while Napoleon was 
victorious. 

10. A thousand times, etc. Notice the rhythmic char- 
acter of this magnificent sentence. It scans almost perfectly in 



192 NOTES 

iambics, with a mixture of anapests. Much of De Quincey's 
"impassioned prose" is as rhythmical as this. The sentence -, 
as it originally appeared in Blackwood reads thus : " A thousand 
times, amongst the phantoms of sleep, has he shown thee to me, % 
standing before the golden dawn, and ready to enter its gates 
— with the dreadful Word going before thee — with the armies 
of the grave behind thee ; shown thee to me, sinking, rising, 
fluttering, fainting, but then suddenly reconciled, adoring: a 
thousand times has he followed thee in the worlds of sleep — < 
through storms ; through desert seas ; through the darkness of 
quicksands ; through fugues and the persecution of fugues ; 
through dreams, and the dreadful resurrections that are in 
dreams — only that at the last, with one motion of his victorious 
arm, he might record and emblazon the endless resurrections of 
his love ! " 

12. The secret word. See p. 139, 1. 8. "Every element 
in the shifting movements of the dream," says De Quincey, 
" derived itself either primarily from the incidents of the actual 
scene, or from secondary features associated with the mail." 
It would be well for the student to identify the minor elements 
of the dream with the suggesting incidents of the Glory of 
Motion and the Vision; such elements, for example, as in 
p. 134, 11. 10-13 ; p. 135, 1. 27. 

20. With one sling of His victorious arm. Barrow quotes 
Paradise Lost, X, G33 : — 

"At one sling 
Of thy victorious arm, well pleasing Son, 
Both Sin and Death, and yawning Grave, at last, 
Through Chaos hurled, obstruct the mouth of Hell, 
For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws." 

Author's Postscript 

When De Quincey revised his essays in 1854 for the Collec- 
tive Edition of his writings, he printed, in the preface to the 
volume containing the English Mail Coach, the following com- 
ments and explanation : — 

"'The English Mail Coach.' This little paper, according 
to my original intention, formed part of the ' Suspiria de Pro- 
fundis ' ; from which, for a momentary purpose, I did not 



NOTES 193 

scruple to detach it, and to publish it apart, as sufficiently- 
intelligible even when dislocated from its place in a larger 
whole. To my surprise, however, one or two critics, not care- 
lessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, professed their 
inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the 
links of the connexion between its several parts. I am myself 
as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect 
any lurking obscurity, as these critics found themselves to un- 
ravel my logic. Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral 
judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract 
of the little paper according to my original design, and then 
leave the reader to judge how far this design is kept in sight 
through the actual execution. 

"Thirty-seven years ago, or rather more, accident made me, 
in the dead of night, and of a night memorably solemn, the 
solitary witness of an appalling scene, which threatened instant 
death in a shape the most terrific to two young people whom I 
had no means of assisting, except in so far as I was able to give 
them a most hurried warning of their danger ; but even that 
not until they stood within the very shadow of the catastrophe, 
being divided from the most frightful of deaths by scarcely 
more, if more at all, than seventy seconds. 

" Such was the scene, such in its outline, from which the 
whole of this paper radiates as a natural expansion. This scene 
is circumstantially narrated in Section the Second, entitled ' The 
Vision of Sudden Death.' 

" But a movement of horror, and of spontaneous recoil from 
this dreadful scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, 
raised and idealised, into my dreams, and very soon into a roll- 
ing succession of dreams. The actual scene, as looked down 
upon from the box of the mail, was transformed into a dream, 
as tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue. This troubled 
dream is circumstantially reported in Section the Third, entitled 
' Dream-Fugue on the theme of Sudden Death.' What I had 
beheld from my seat upon the mail, — the scenical strife of 
action and passion, of anguish and fear, as I had there wit- 
nessed them moving in ghostly silence, — this duel between life 
and death narrowing itself to a point of such exquisite evanes- 
cence as the collision neared : all these elements of the scene 



194 NOTES 

blended, under the law of association, with the previous and 
permanent features of distinction investing the mail itself ; 
which features at that time lay — 1st, in velocity unprece- 
dented, 2dly, in the power and beauty of the horses, 3dly, in 
the official connexion with the government of a great nation, 
and, 4thly, in the function, almost a consecrated function, of 
publishing and diffusing through the land the great political 
events, and especially the great battles, during a conflict of 
unparalleled grandeur. These honorary distinctions are all 
described circumstantially in the First or introductory Section 
('The Glory of Motion'). The three first were distinctions 
maintained at all times ; but the fourth and grandest belonged 
exclusively to the war with Napoleon; and this it was which 
most naturally introduced Waterloo into the dream. Waterloo, 
I understand, was the particular feature of the ' Dream-Fugue' 
which my censors were Least able to account for. Yet surely 
"Waterloo, which, in common with every other great battle, it 
had been our special privilege to publish over all the land, most 
naturally entered the dream under the licence of our privilege. 
If not — if there be anything amiss — let the Dream be respon- 
sible. The Dream is a law to itself; and as well quarrel with 
a rainbow for showing, or for not showing, a secondary arch. 
So far as I know, every element in the shifting movements of 
the Dream derived itself either primarily from the incidents 
of the actual scene, or from secondary features associated with 
the mail. For example, the cathedral aisle derived itself from 
the mimic combination of features which grouped themselves 
together at the point of approaching collision — viz. an arrow- 
like section of the road, six hundred yards long, under the 
solemn lights described, with lofty trees meeting overhead in 
arches. The guard's horn, again — a humble instrument in 
itself — was yet glorified as the organ of publication for so 
many great national events. And the incident of the Dying 
Trumpeter, who rises from a marble bas-relief, and carries a 
marble trumpet to his marble lips for the purpose of warning 
the female infant, was doubtless secretly suggested by my own 
imperfect effort to seize the guard's horn, and to blow the warn- 
ing blast. But the Dream knows best ; and the Dream, I say 
again, is the responsible party." 



XOTES ' 195 



LEVAXA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW 

Introductory Note. This paper is one of several which De 
Quincey included under the general title Suspiriq de Profun- 
di*, intended as a Sequel to the Confessions of an Opium Eater. 
Other papers in the series are The Afflictions of Childhood, 
Dream Echoes, Vision of Sudden Death and Dream- Fugue, 
TJie Palimpsest, Savannah-la-Mar, Memorial Suspiria, The 
Apparitio?i of the Brocken, and The Daughter of Lebanon. 
Many others were planned, but never fully written. Those 
remarkable productions — the best of them — are the glorified 
visions of his opium dreams, given a substantial and permanent 
existence through the conscious effort of art. of Levana Mas- 
son says : " This little paper is, perhaps, all in all, the finest 
thing that De Quincey ever wrote. It is certainly the most 
perfect specimen lie has left us of his peculiar art of English 
prose-poetry, and certainly also one of the most magnificent 
pieces of prose in the English or in any other language." 

147 : 2. Levare. Tins verb signifies also, in its derived 
sense, to lighten, relieve, <<>us<de; hence alleviate. 

148 : L3. Eton. The celebrated preparatory school, near 
Windsor, founded by Henry VI in 1441. 

14. On the foundation. At the English colleges a student 
•• on the foundation " is one who receives aid from the perma- 
nent endowment. 

149:1. Graces. The daughters of Bacchus artd Venus, 
Agla'ia (brightness), Thali'a (bloom), and Euphos'y-ne (cheer- 
fulness), in Milton's lines : — 

" In heaven yclep'd Euphrosyne, 
And by men heart-easing Mirth." 

2. Parcae. The Fates, Clotho, Lach'esis, and A'tropos, rep- 
resented (as in Michael Angelo's picture) as spinning the thread 
of human destiny. 

6. Furies (Lat. Furicv). The avenging deities, Tisiph'o-ne, 
Alecto, and Megaera, euphemistically called Eumenides "the 
well-meaning" or "gracious goddesses," because people were 
afraid to call them by their real names. 

8. Muses. The inspiring goddesses of song : in the early his- 



196 NOTES 

tory of art only three are found, represented with the lyre and 
the flute. Hesiocl first named nine. They are Cli'o (muse 
of history), Euter'pe (lyric poetry), Melpom'e-ne (tragedy), 
Calli'o-pe (epic poetry), Terpsich'o-re (dance and song), Er'a-to 
(erotic poetry), Polyhym'nia (sublime song), Ura'nia (astron- 
omy), Thali'a (comedy). 

150:29. Mater Lachrymarum. Mother of Tears; Lat. 
mater, mother, and lachryma, a tear. 

151 : 2. Rachel weeping for her children. Cf. Jeremiah 
xxxi. 15; Matthew ii. 18. 

152 : 4. Bedchamber of the Czar. Princess Alexandra, third 
daughter of the Emperor Nicholas, nineteen years of age, died 
in August. 1844. 

153:-"). Pariah. This w.»rd occurs very frequently in De 
Quincey's writings. From a very early age his Imagination 
seems to have been strongly affected by the idea of the "social 
outcast 1 ' in all ages and nations. 

Bondsman to the oar. etc. Referring to the French method 
of disposing of criminals. 

7. Norfolk Island. A small island in the Pacific Ocean, east 
of Australia ; used as a penal colony for the most heavily sen- 
tenced British convicts. 

20. Sepulchral lamps. The Romans were accustomed to 
visit the tombs of relatives at certain periods, and to present 
oblations to the departed soul, as of wine, milk, ami flowers. 
On these occasions Lamps, lucemas septUcrates, were lighted in 
the tombs. 

154 : 8. Amongst the tents of Shem. Cf. Genesis ix. 27. 

19. Cybele (Cyb'e-le). A Phrygian goddess, often called the 
11 Great Mother " or •• Mother of the Gods." She is represented, 
in works of art, seated on a throne with lions by her side, or in 
a chariot drawn by lions, and crowned with a high, turreted 
crown. 

155 : i3, Semnai Theai. The name given to Eumenides at 
Athens. 

14. Gracious Ladies. See note on p. 149, 1. 6. 



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